Oral history interview with Luis Felicia [Army town]

              ARMY TOWN – ORAL HISTORIES 1
INTERVIEWEE: Luis Felicia
INTERVIEWER: J. Stephen Catlett
DATE: July 7, 1993
[Begin Interview]
JSC: [unclear] –day, July 7, 1993. This is an interview with Louie Felicia, of Greensboro, who was in charge of the Service Club number 1 at BTC [Basic Training Center] number 10, later ORD [Overseas Replacement Depot], military, Army/Air Force base at Greensboro, 1943-1945. Mr. Felicia went on to set up a dance studio in Greensboro, Felicia Studio of Dance, and has retired in Greensboro.
[Recording Paused]
[Catlett testing recording device redacted]
LF: The only criticism I had was that I should’ve kept my 8x10’s because the copies you made, you know, you brought back—you gave me the small ones, and they said I shouldn’t have done that, when the fellows saw it, they said you should’ve got 8x10’s back.
JSC: Well, you know—
LF: Because the copies, you know, you gave me the small ones back. It doesn’t bother me, but uh—
JSC: Well, you know we can always get large ones if you want them.
1 This recording was conducted by J. Stephen Catlett, Archivist at the Greensboro Historical Museum, as part of the research for the Army Town: Greensboro 1943-1946 exhibit that was held at the Greensboro Historical Museum from November 1993 until November 1995. Excerpts from this recorded were played in the Army Town exhibit, as well as in the current (2014) Voices of a City: Greensboro North Carolina. LF: See, like you cut them down to that. And the ones you returned, that you copied, you gave me the small ones.
JSC: That’s right.
LF: And, when we had that little meeting with the guys, they said - See, these are the ones you copied - and they said I should’ve kept the 8x10’s. Well, it didn’t bother me any, because it’s just a record, and—
JSC: Well, you had talked about [recording error] [unclear], like the whole collection at one time. So, this is just a trade-off, we sort of may—
Now I’m just refreshing my memory here as I look. I think you had duplicates, because I—
LF: Yeah, some of those were duplicates.
JSC: Yeah, because I took some—I know some of the larger ones I have were in duplicate form.
LF: Some of the ones you ran in the paper you got from me, too. Eleanor Roosevelt?
JSC: Yes, that’s the one they—I didn’t do that article. But they—they did. Well, the copies came out pretty good. [unclear]. Now was this—was this a color picture taken at the time?
LF: That was taken—I took that with just a little box camera. This is while I was on [unclear].
JSC: But that was a color photograph, right?
LF: Uh-hm. This little camera, that I had in the army with me.
JSC: Right, right.
LF: After you left, I gathered up all of this stuff, and I tried to, you know, what do you call it, put everything into separate positions. And so I had a lot of it scattered all over, so I tried to put like, show business in one, the studio in another, and the army in the other, so that’s what I’ve done. I went through a lot of junk that I had left. Because a lot of it I got threw away at one time, got rid of a lot of stuff.
JSC: Now—
LF: Because I didn’t think that a lot of people would be interested in it.
JSC: Oh, now, this one’s a good one. I don’t remember this one. This is you actually dancing with someone, right?
LF: See, what I had when I saw you before, I had—don’t you remember you suggested it to me? That I should—
JSC: Right. I’ve got several of you dancing—
LF: The word correlates, that’s the word I’ve been trying to find. In other words, keep everything in the same place. You’ve got enough light there, you want some more?
JSC: No, that’s fine. I’m just thinking about—
LF: I started when the guys went through it, I started—putting it that way, I thought the next time I saw you here, came back—you might find some of that stuff interesting, I didn’t know—
JSC: Now, this is the one I might use, at this area where we’re talking about doing reminiscences of the base, this photograph that you, watching from the—this one’s nice too, I don’t remember this one, it’s probably in here—
LF: I think it’s probably in one of the other books.
JSC: Oh really?
LF: See, some of this stuff I didn’t have in the [unclear].
[recording error] [sound of someone hitting the microphone]
JSC: Okay, so you had started in New Jersey, and you—I think you went to Atlantic City for your basic training, right?
LF: No, no, Miami Beach, Florida.
JSC: Oh.
LF: For my basic. See the army had taken over those hotels in Miami Beach, and we were stationed there, and they took the hotels and cleaned them all out, and took away everything out except the venetian blinds and the beds, or the cots. We had two men to each room, we had our shower. We couldn’t use the lights—it was electric—because of the blackout, we were right one the coast, you know. We had to do guard duty, I almost went to sleep on guard duty once and could’ve gotten court marshaled. I was standing there, we’d go on four hours—we’d sleep four hours, and two hours on duty, and we had to stand with our piece on the—you know, gun, we’d call it a piece—on the beach, and one night I was standing there about 2 ‘o’clock in the morning, the breeze was coming across that ocean, and I was sound asleep standing up. And the O.D. came around, the officer of the day, and he caught me. And I could’ve been court marshaled, because the German submarines are right out there, that’s the reason we had to be blackout all the time, because they could’ve bombed us out, you know. But he was kind, I guess he felt sorry for me, I don’t know. He didn’t turn me in. Boy, I could’ve got it good for falling asleep on duty. But we thought it would be great living there in those nice hotels, but they’d come around with a white glove, and they’d touch the venetian blinds, and if one room had dust, good boy, everybody got gigged—the whole hotel. And then we’d be upstairs, and we couldn’t use the elevators, and they’d blow the whistle—you’d just about get to sleep, and they’d blow the whistle—about 2:30, 3:00 in the morning. And we’d have to leave the hotel—vacate the hotel in so many minutes, and they’d stand there a time it. And if we didn’t all get out—the whole hotel—we’d had to go back and do it again. And sometimes we’d go back and get to sleep again, and in another half hour, they’d call us out again. They took all the tables out of the dining rooms, and they’d put those, the old benches in there—park benches, and we’d have to turn them over and scrub them on the bottom and the top. Everything had to be G.I. clean, you know. The food was wonderful, they gave us great food.
JSC: Now, tell me about your—what’s your earliest memory in terms of coming here to Greensboro?
LF: Well, [unclear] they sent me to school at Ft. Monmouth, in Red Bank, N.J. and it was six of us that went up to school for the Signal Core, because the Air Force didn’t have a Signal Core, at the time. And six of us went up there to study, and we were from the Air Force and that was infantry. And they made fun of us, they said we were boy scouts, and we were mighty glad after we got the basic, and the infantry basic was much tougher. Now we went and came back to Miami—but you’re not interested in that part anyway. Came back to Miami, and they assigned all six of us—none of washed out, we all passed—and only one out of the six of was assigned to the Signal Core. And the rest of us went back to our original jobs. And I was in Special Services down there. And I had the, they used to the Olympia Theatre they’d bring the stars there, like Judy Garland, and they’d come to our place and we had an outdoor theatre. And my job was to run that thing, with several other people, of course. And the stars would come to the Olympia, and then they would come to the base at Miami Beach. And all the sailors were in Miami, and all the soldiers, Air Force were in Miami Beach. And we’d go back and forth. And then they’d—the stars would come and give a show there, for the soldiers.
JSC: Well, when did you get your orders to come to Greensboro?
LF: And then they shipped—they took another fellow, and me—just two of us, and they shipped us here. We came in alone, we weren’t on a shipment. And I had a call here that they wanted somebody in the Special Services, and see I was trained for that.
JSC: Now was this—you came in ’43, when it was still BTC-10.
LF: It was just before BC-10 changed, just before.
JSC: Well that happened in May of ’44, would you have come in early ’44, or late ’43?
LF: I came here in November ’43. Because I remembered, because I came out here and I saw these old barracks, and it was real cold, and got here at 2 ‘o’clock in the morning, and those old oil heaters, and the smoke, and I thought “Oh lord, I’m going to die here. I would never stand it.” And the week before, I had been to—see I didn’t come from Miami, I came from Ft. Monmouth, they sent our orders there. And instead of going back to Miami, first we went back, and we went back up there again, and then they sent us down here. And the other fellow and I were just two of us on post, and I got in Special Services under Lt. Ernst’s—George Ernst was my Lieutenant, he was the boss. And of course I was in limited service, because of my eye, see, I couldn’t see out of my right eye. That’s why I was in limited service, and didn’t go overseas. But a couple times I was scheduled to go overseas, but Lt. Ernst had me scratched, said he needed me here.
JSC: Now what did you find when you got here, were most of the facilities already available, or what existed?
LF: Yeah, when I got here everything was in. We didn’t even have much mud, because they called it Camp Mud. See I didn’t find that, but some of the fellows that I talked to remember when they came here, it was all muddy. We had the streets paved, and everything when I came. And they had the telephone company, and theatres, everything was running when I came. Again Service Club #1.
JSC: Where was Service Club #1?
LF: Right over here on—now you can see it, there’s still part of it over there, they made it into some kind of an office building. Now we took a ride when we got together, went all over the post, and found little remnants of things, and he had that map, he made that map. And we spent about two or three hours, when we had that little meeting.
JSC: What was the service club like here, what was your job?
LF: Well, my job to run the—one side we had the cafeteria, on the other end we had the dance floor, and upstairs we had like a balcony, and there were writing tables so the boys could come up and write letters, and then they could read, and relax there. And then we had our dances, and shows downstairs, in the big [unclear]. And the furniture was movable, we could move it all back, and during the day, we had the furniture out there so they could come in and read and relax, and do what they wanted. Then we had the cafeteria they could go in there and buy a meal without having to go to the PX [Post Exchange]—not the PX, but the mess hall—and they get tired of mess hall food, you know.
JSC: What type of food did they have there, at the service club?
LF: Well the food was good. We had good food, strictly army, you know. Great quantities of it. In the cafeteria we had a doughnut machine, and we [unclear] doughnuts, and the boys would come in and get the doughnuts, two for a nickel. Imagine that, great big doughnuts. [chuckles] Now you can’t even smell for a nickel.
JSC: Who worked there, were there civilians that worked there?
LF: We had civilians that worked there. And what happened, we were running it with soldiers all the time, and then we had civilian help, we had Red Cross women, two or three of them came in. In fact, that’s the one that got me started on the dance classes; Reba was her first name, that’s all I remember. They were with the Red Cross, workers. And the PX decided—they were going to take the cafeteria and turn it over to the PX, and see we ran it. So, this woman came in and she was in charge—civilian woman—in charge of the cafeteria. Well she and I got in a fight every day, because I thought she was the meanest woman in the world, and she didn’t want to run the doughnut machine early, and I wanted the doughnuts ready when the guys come in, see I was for the boys, naturally. And we got along real well, because—we became very good friends, afterwards. In fact, she was afraid to bring her children to my studio, because she thought I’d throw her out. And we’d—her daughters were students of mine, see then. Up until then, the Army ran the whole thing, the whole service club. Then after that—well it’s all Army, the PX people with civilian help—you know what the PX is, it was like a store, a variety store for us. And then came in and ran the cafeteria then, you know, and they made a lot of changes which I didn’t like. So it was one of those things, butting heads, but we finally got that straightened out. It was real interesting, because we had the—if you are interested in it [unclear]?
JSC: Oh, yeah.
LF: Then Reba, she kept saying, she knew I was a dance teacher, because that’s what I had been doing—or dance business, because when I left show business then I worked in a hotel until they called me, because I had enlisted, you know. Went to Louisville, Kentucky, and worked as a hotel clerk until they called me. And she kept saying, why don’t you start a dance class for these boys here? The reason she said that was because Mrs. Elliott, she has passed away now, can’t figure her first name—
JSC: Harriet?
LC: Harriet Elliott, was it Harriet? She used to send two busloads of women—students—to the camp while we bring bands in here, orchestras—we had good orchestras and everything, dance orchestras. And they’d come in, and the boys would stand over here, and the girls would stand over there, because nobody would ask them to dance, because they didn’t want to come anymore. And said because they didn’t want to come over and just stand around, and come to find out Reba says it’s because a lot of them don’t know how to dance. See, most of them were real young guys. Fact, I was an old man compared to some of those fellows. And so Reba said “Why don’t you come in and start a class?” and said “Oh, shucks, that’ll be sissy, they won’t want to do that” I didn’t think they’d like it, they’d laugh at me, you know. Because you know, you had to be macho, you know. She says “Why don’t you do it?” and I said well I—I was going on furlough, to Columbus, my home, and when I get back I’ll start it. And, she didn’t wait until I got back, she put up a poster, and she had sixty fellows signed up for dance classes. Of course, they didn’t pay for it, it was free. And then I was stuck, I had to do it, because in the lobby, she put a poster up, and all that stuff. And so we started. And it was real successful, they loved it. And they’d come in there with their G.I. boots on, and I’d teach them the box step, and I got letters from all over, afterwards, from some of them. They’d only get maybe one or two lessons, because they’d get shipped out. Then, it was an overseas replacement [unclear], see they changed it [unclear], that’s what it means Overseas Replacement Depot, ORD. When it was BTC it was a training center, see when it changed over to ORD, fellows would come in and they’d be shipped out. They had so many Army—so many officers, you know, what do you call, Sergeants, they had a lot of officers, I mean regular officers, Lieutenants, Captains, and the regular officers’ club wasn’t big enough. So they had to make that, they called it the—somebody took it over and made it into a store, after the—
JSC: Army, maybe a surplus store?
LF: Over there, it’s like a surplus store. [unclear] something they called it anyway. And they made that into the ORD officers’ club, for the transient officers. And it was like a small city, you know, we had everything here. Fact is, I believe the camp was bigger than Greensboro at the time. Everything was segregated, this, where we’re sitting right now, was all black barracks in this section. And over on that end, the building is still there, was the black service club. Because I used to have to send doughnuts over there, because they didn’t have a doughnut machine, we’d make the doughnuts over here, and send them over there.
JSC: Was that service club #2?
LF: I believe it was #2. I can’t remember the number. I believe I was 1 or 2, I get confused sometimes thinking about it.
JSC: I think that yours was service club #1.
LF: Uh huh, the [unclear].
JSC: What other types of dance steps—did you teach fast dancing?
LF: No, we taught the—at that time, because you see, the Jitterbug was, they called it the Jitterbug in Swing, and then we had the Waltz, and the Foxtrot, and the standard things. Of course the dancing they do now, we didn’t have that then.
JSC: Do you have a memory, then, of after you gave your first couple of dance lessons, of having to dance with the women there. Did things really—
LF: Yeah, then after they did that, the guys would get out and try it then. Maybe they weren’t good at it, but at least they had the guts to go over and ask the girl to dance. But see if they didn’t know how, they were backwards, see they didn’t ask and the girls got—they said they didn’t want to come over anymore because nobody asked them to dance, and they didn’t want to come over and stand around, see. So it did some good, I think. It helped a lot. But see I was reluctant to do it for a long time, because—she kept after me to do it, and I saw naw, they won’t like it, you know. I didn’t think they would come, but I was surprised at how many did like it.
JSC: Well, did it pick up, I mean, once a few started [unclear].
LF: Oh, yeah, we got so many of them we couldn’t handle any more of them, it was too [unclear] get that many people out on the floor, you know. I had a little microphone, so they could hear me, you know.
JSC: Now did you actually do the instruction there at the service club, on the big floor?
LF: Yeah, I’d get on the floor, and I think you can see a picture there where we were doing a congo line, you know, I was leading it. And that’s how I got started in Greensboro, because the city of recreation people would come out. Mabel Smith, at that time, was in charge of part of it, and they asked me to come to Greensboro and teach Ballroom. So I taught it to Central school, we took the tables up in the cafeteria at Central school, it’s gone now, it’s over there where that Weaver section is, that’s where Central school used to be. And I had over one hundred ballroom students, not soldiers, but civilian people. And that’s how I got started, they asked me why I didn’t come over here and open a school. So that’s what I did. I got discharged in February—on February 12th, Lincoln’s birthday, I was on the last group to be discharged from ORD. The next group had to go to Ft. Bragg to be discharged. Right after that—
JSC: That was in ’46.
LF: I was in—February 12, 1946. So I went home and came back here and opened my studio in April, 1946. And been here ever since.
JSC: What size was—how many people could dance at the service club, I mean, could it hold a couple hundred, or was it larger than that?
LF: I don’t think—maybe a hundred, or a hundred and fifty, because it wasn’t all that big. It was a good sized building, but we didn’t have a problem because it wouldn’t be that many that would dance, you know. I think that maybe sixty or seventy, maybe a hundred at the most would be in the class. But a lot of them would observe; they’d sit up there at the balcony and watch. Then of course we had the big top; that big tent and we had a stage in there and we had shows—the big top.
JSC: What type of shows?
LF: We had all kinds of—there’s a picture in there of an acrobat that was on, and I did a dance with one of my partners. I took a WAAC [Women’s Auxiliary Air Corps] that was here and trained her how to dance, and we did an exhibition dance on the stage. And the Big Top was real nice, it brought in traveling shows, mostly big bands, orchestras. And that was a big tent. We called it the Big Top.
JSC: I’ve seen a picture of it.
LF: Oh, it was really something. I had a real nice—and of course that was only a PFC. And I was doing—Lt. Ernst said you do all the work, and he didn’t know anything about show business and he would turn everybody over to me, and I was a PFC [Private First Class]. And he was getting the rank and the pay. So we had what they called a Post Central Fund. And they paid me extra out of the Post Central Fund. So that brought my pay up, although I didn’t have the bars or the chickens on my shoulder, I was getting the money, so that helped. When you were getting fifty-four dollars a month, that’s a lot of money you know.
JSC: Now, exactly what were your duties, when you say you sort of handled everything, what was a week like, at the service center?
LF: Well, I—they gave me permission to live off post, because I couldn’t sleep during in daytime, because I’d work sometimes real late. And then I’d try to sleep in the barracks, and they’d be waking them up at three, four in the morning, and I didn’t have to get up that early. So they gave me permission, so I got a room at the YMCA [Young Men’s Christian Association] for a while. And I’d go in there on certain days, I’d go there so I could sleep, you know, and rest. You’d get up in the morning, we’d have the doughnuts machine running, because the boys would come in there and get coffee and doughnuts. And then all day long, see, different ones had time off, you know, and they’d come in there and read, or—everybody’s schedule was different, there was so many—when they weren’t training or doing, or—and then after it became ORD, a lot of them had nothing to do; that is just to wait for their orders to ship out. And they weren’t—oh, they’d go and take PT, you know, something like that. And you’d always have to take your exercise, and go to dinner, and stuff like that. And when it was Basic Training, see they had a heavier schedule. And there’d be somebody coming in to read or write letters, or socialize.
JSC: So you were primarily managing the facility, more or less?
LF: Just like a—ran, everything—well we ran movie machines, they came in one day and said, well that’s another thing, they came over there for training films. We had to run—and a guy came in and he says “I want you to run”—captain or somebody—and they said “I want you to run this film for the boys this afternoon” and I had never even seen a movie machine, let along run one. I didn’t know anything about that. I’d been in show business and worked with movies, I mean, on the bill with the film. And we had that in show business—in show business we had the presentation, towards last they’d run a movie and four acts of vaudeville, and that’s how I worked with the thing. And the guy came in and brought that in, and I looked at that machine I thought “Lord!” and I tried to thread it, and I set it backwards, and that’s the first time I ran it, I ran it upside down! [chuckles] But I finally got it to working by the time the boys came in for it. But that’s the way the Army was, you know, you do it, here it is. They handed me that movie machine and I didn’t know from nothing about it. And then the boys come in and we’d run the training film.
JSC: Now, when you said—I’ve seen a picture of a—it’s like a huge box, almost like a TV, but it was called a—where they saw films, I believe. But it was like a—I’m assuming a rear projection-type, but you’re talking about actual, a projector, and threading film in, and showing it on a screen?
LF: This is just a portable projector, you know, like you carry around. And—because they had the theatres, several theatres on the Post running regular movies. And—but this was just a portable projector; in fact I had one for my studio that I used to rent for my students. It was a heavy machine but you could—it was portable. I’d never seen one until he brought that thing in there, you know, I’d seen it from a distance in the control room of a theater, or something.
JSC: Now, other than the sort of the everyday management and things that might pop up like the TV, were you involved in planning activities, for instance—
LF: Oh, yeah.
JSC: For instance, when there was a dance that was going to happen, did that involved a lot of work or planning?
LF: Well, we’d plan the dance, and they I’d have to figure out what kind of music we were going to have, and we’d have to have recordings sometimes, sometimes we’d have a band there. If a band, the orchestra came in on that day, then we could have the band—they’d come in to play that night, and some of the musicians, like the pianist, or somebody would come over and play for the dance class beforehand. That was my business to [unclear] smuggle people in to do stuff, you know. And all you had to ask them, and you had your uniform and they’d do it for you, you know, they’d say poor old soldier. And we got by with a lot that way, because they’d come and do things for us. And then we had the helpers, they would—detail men over there, like to do the cleaning, waxing the floors, and run the buffers, and all that stuff. I had to have charge of all of that because we had restrooms that had to be cleaned, you know. And we had the regular boys on the post, and then when we had the German prisoners here—see we had a bunch of German prisoners—and I used to get eight German prisoners every week. And some of them were just kids, they were real young, you know, and they’d come, and they’d send me eight of them, and every week I’d get a different batch. And they were there to clean, and you know, do the chores around the club.
JSC: Did they ever give you any problems?
LF: No, they were real happy. We had a hard time because I couldn’t understand German; I had a little bit of German in school, and I lived in a German section in Columbus. But I didn’t have that much. But we got by, with sign languages and everything. And they were real happy; I think they were happy to be prisoners. Because we gave—because they had a lot of good food to eat. One of them said “My goodness,” he finally got it across to me, he says, “Hitler would feed the whole army with what you just threw away.” You know, we had to pour—like, hot dogs, and roast beef in the hot weather, same like in Miami, it had to be thrown away because you couldn’t keep it. You know, it was dangerous. And a lot of that stuff was wasted. And they saw that, they didn’t have that in their army.
JSC: Was there any resentment, soldiers toward the German prisoners, do you remember any of that?
LF: Well, I never experienced it. The ones that came, I don’t know, they were just such pitiful th—I felt sorry for them. Yet they were happy to be prisoners! Because we didn’t abuse them— I mean, I didn’t see any abuse, if there was. Of course there might’ve been some that had, you know. But, after all, we had some of our men were prisoners, too, you know. But we used to draw straws to see who would clean the ladies’ room—none of them liked to clean the ladies’ room, the ladies’ room was dirtier than the men’s room. We had two of those, so that all had to be cleaned and scrubbed. And everything had to be G.I. in the Army, just like those hotels in the Miami. They had never been that clean since nor before. Because we had to scrub them with toothbrushes, lobbies and everything, with that G.I. soap. And the inspector would come around and everything had to be right. And everything had to be clean, boy, it had to be spotless.
JSC: I’m interested, if you have any, sort of your memories of the base, what was it like, was it drab, do you remember colors at all, was it just pretty drab base, was it lively with people moving around?
LF: Well it was drab, when as I said, when I first came because I came in at two ‘o’clock in November, and the smoke and everything, those old barracks, had those [unclear] barracks had those circulator coal heaters, oil or something. But anyway it was real bleary, and I thought “Lord, I’m going to die here, I’ll never enjoy this.” But, I learned to care enough about the place afterwards. But the people in Greensboro were real nice. The civilians that came on the post, some of them didn’t do anything but type letters, in the offices and everything. And everything was pretty lively, because we had so much activity.
JSC: So there was sort of like a hustle and bustle during the day?
LF: Yeah, something going on all the time. And of course I was in the interesting fields, you know, of course we had the hospital, that wasn’t so happy for a lot of them, you had the telephone exchange, a lot of civilians—in fact, I’ve talked to two of women since that article came out in the paper, that worked at the telephone exchange, they called me on the phone and talked to me.
JSC: Did they remember you or something?
LF: One of them, the man—one man called Mr. Moore, his wife remembered taking lessons in that class, and what’s that place I told you, downtown, on Spring Street?
JSC: The Central School.
LF: Central School. And the other woman, called and she said that she remembered coming over to the service club to eat in the cafeteria, and she remembered me. I couldn’t place her, but—so many, you know, but it was interesting.
JSC: Do you have any bad memories of serving at the base here? Is there anything—
LF: Well, not except the Army.
JSC: Just the general Army?
LF: There was a lot of stuff in the Army that you could do without. I wouldn’t take anything for all the experience, but I wouldn’t want to go through it again. Because I learned a lot, got a lot of benefits. It’s a great equalizer; you got ideas in your head when you’re young and you come in that “What I think is right” and you find out someone else has got an idea that might be right, you know? You meet all kinds, just like one when I came in and they issued the clothes, this one fellow was so—his bunk was right next to mine, and—
JSC: Keep talking.
LF: And he was real happy about all those clothes they issued; and the rest of us were griping, we didn’t like that, and we didn’t like this, and didn’t like that. But he was very happy to get that wool jacket, and those suntans—we called those suntans, light clothes, and then the heavy wool ones. And he said to me “Well, what do I do with this?” And it was a tie, you know, and I said “Well, you just tie it, it’s a Four and Hand tie, just like civilian, the only difference is it’s a—it’s a tan color. Tan, you know, instead of a colored tie.” And he said “I’ve never had a tie”, and he was 26 years old. I don’t know where he came from, some place, and he’d never had a suit of clothes, that’s why he was enamored over all these clothes, and we were fussing, because, you know, they gave you fists that didn’t fit sometimes, they’d throw them out, the shoes and everything.
JSC: So for some people, Army life was a good life.
LF: Oh, yeah. This fellow here, he said he was happy with it. And then he couldn’t write his name. And I couldn’t understand how anybody in this day and age couldn’t read and write. So he went “I want to go to reading and writing school.” He wanted to learn how to read and write in the Army. He came from the mountains, some place, and just didn’t have the opportunity, I guess. But it was interesting, I tell you.
JSC: Now did—were there any funny or interesting experiences, or interesting people that you met? Did now—I would guess that maybe any stars probably didn’t come to the service club, didn’t they tend to come to like, the Big Top?
LF: Yeah, well we had Donald O’Connor was in the company with me, and Gene, Gene, Martin, Martin’s a singer—what’s his first name? Anyway, he was here, and what’s the fellow that played Moses—
JSC: Charlton Heston.
LF: Charlton Heston was here, and he got married in Greensboro, you know.
JSC: Now did you—you didn’t meet him, he was not really a star then.
LF: I saw him one time, I didn’t talk to him. I saw him just one time at the post.
JSC: Now what was your contact with Donald O’Connor?
LF: Donald O’Connor was in the same company with me. He was in the same barracks. And we put on some shows here. Now Donald O’Connor was one of them, and then Sabu, the Elephant Boy—you’ve heard of him—he’s passed away now, he was here in my company. And he played in those Tarzan pictures and everything. Now, trying to think of another one that was here. Well, Donald came to the—my dance classes, I mean, he was here, he is a dancer anyway, he was a professional. But he came to the service club two or three times with the dancers, and then he was shipped out.
JSC: I have a photograph in one of the papers that his wife was here, shows he and his wife on stage. Did you—do you remember her?
LF: No, I don’t remember—I remember him performing here, but I can’t remember that.
JSC: I talked with one man who lives in Ohio, near Cincinnati, he called about last fall, I got two calls in the same week, from men who were writing up their reminiscences of World War II, and they both thought they remembered coming through a town that sort of sounded like Greensboro, so they called, and found out that there was a historical museum and they were put in touch with me, and they had both come through ORD, but one fellow was here in January ’46, and he said that Donald O’Connor was here at that time, I think he was here earlier, too, but his memory was that the guys in his barracks were real jealous of O’Connor, because it was really super cold, and their barracks was not heated too well, but apparently Donald O’Connor and his men who were performing had their own barracks, which was well heated, or something. That was his memory.
LF: I didn’t know anything about that, it’s possible, you know. But I didn’t get to know him, but, you know, like I’d just see him, and talk to him, going through, something like that. I didn’t know him in the professional business, either. Of course, I knew Danny Thomas real well, he’s a close friend of mine. And his original name was Amos Jacobs, and he changed it, became a millionaire after that. Now he passed away recently too. I knew him when Marlo was little, —Marlo was his high one—I knew him, and her brother. And I remember when Eleanor Roosevelt came, I enjoyed that.
JSC: Now she didn’t come to the service club, did she?
LF: She came and—just in and out, that’s how I got to meet her. She went around, they took her around to see things, you know, and we were guided like on a tour. And I got to meet her, just casually, like you meet a celebrity. I remember seeing her pictures, movies, and news reels, and I thought she was so—I always admired her, but I thought she was the homeliest woman I knew. But when I met her, she wasn’t homely. She had a personality, or something, that when you talked to her personally, she was beautiful. And I never could quite figure that out. Because in my mind, I thought she’s a—she was homely, she wasn’t a beautiful woman. But when I met her, she just was beautiful. I guess it was her personality and everything.
JSC: Now, do you have memories of Greensboro during the war? Did you, I guess you didn’t have a lot of free time to do much in Greensboro itself.
LF: Well, I used to go uptown on weekends, and we’d go up, and I remember one time this one fellow—and I can’t remember who it was, we were together—and we decided we weren’t going to eat Christmas dinner on the post, we were just not going to do it. So we were going uptown and eat, for Christmas dinner. So, we went uptown, and there wasn’t a thing open. All the restaurants, of course we didn’t have them like we got now. Every restaurant in town was closed, and the only thing we could find was a little restaurant on the lower Elm Street on the other side of the railroad tracks, and little Greek restaurant and all they had were hot dogs and black coffee, they didn’t even have cream for the coffee. And we ate hot dogs and coffee for our Christmas dinner. We when got back on the post, all the fellows told us what a festive meal they had, they had everything, turkey and [unclear]—we did have good food. But that cured us for being so—we were going to be real uppity, and we weren’t going to have Christmas dinner on the post, you know, in the mess hall. And we ended up eating hot dogs for Christmas.
And there was another guy in the post, in the barracks one day, and I came in, and he had a fellow sitting in the chair and he was cutting his hair, you know. He had a couple of other fellows waiting to get their hair cut in the afternoon, and I said, and I went over to him and I said “Are you a barber?” he says, “No, but my Uncle was.” [laughs] And he was cutting the fellows hair and charging them fifty cents. [laughs] And they were paying him fifty cents.
And there was this other guy, the other sergeant, who was on the post, and he used to come in, and he had his billfold just full of money, I mean with so much money he just couldn’t [unclear], and he said—they used to call me Lou— and he said “Lou, why don’t you go with me sometime, uptown?” And here, what he was doing, he and his wife was living off post, he was a sergeant, and he’s from New York or someplace up in there, and he had a truck that used to come down here, that used to haul chicken feed. And of course, it was dry here then, you couldn’t buy liquor. And he’d come down here with a truck load of whisky, and gin, and all that stuff, and he’d put it in his car, and go downtown and sell it, to all the local people. And he was bootlegging and making all kinds of money. He was on the post here, and one day he came into the gate, and the car was sagging with so much stuff, and they stopped him, and they found the liquor, so they confiscated it. And when he came in I says “Well, what are they going to—“ and he says, “Well they can’t do anything to me, I’ve been furnishing liquor for all the officers on the post.” And he was getting all the liquor because this was a dry state; you had to drive to Danville [Virginia] then to get liquor here, then, fifty miles. They didn’t even have the brown bagging thing yet then, I guess then had brown bagging but you couldn’t buy liquor, we didn’t have liquor stores. And I remember I went with him, that’s how I found it out, afterwards. He got picked up afterwards, but I went with him one day, downtown, and he’d just get out of the car, and take the liquor bottle and put his arm, and walk in and come back out with the money. Just as open as it could be. And I remember one of them was a place where they made pool tables, I think it was Wilhelm, or something like that, and he went in there with fists of liquor and came out with the money. And he made a fortune, he was making money hand over fist. He had some kind of a connection with a guy that was bringing—I don’t know whether he was bringing chicken feet in or out, but anyway, that’s where they got it, where he got it.
JSC: That’s wild.
LF: He was a little short fellow, I can’t remember his name.
JSC: Now, one thing we’ve been confused about, and you probably can’t help us too much since you didn’t really live in the barracks, but I’ve had different people describe differently what the barracks were like inside, do you have any memories of that?
LF: Oh, sure, I lived in the barracks.
JSC: Describe to me, if you can, your mental picture of what the barracks looked like.
LF: Well, they were old what we called tarp paper barracks, and you had bunk beds, one after the other, and they were double, the top and the bottom.
JSC: Did they stick out from the wall like this, or were they flat against the wall? Do you remember the bunk beds?
LF: No, they were out this way—
JSC: So they sort of—
LF: They—Like, the windows were in over here, and the beds were this way, and you had an aisle up the center, [unclear] this way.
JSC: The barracks were twenty feet wide, and about one hundred feet long. That’s, you know, the information I have. I found—I talked with one man who was in charge of disposing of the property, and he said if you’ll go look at the Greensboro papers in about 1947, he started putting ads, so I did find the ads and they were selling all types of stuff out here, but they were selling the barracks, and they were 20 foot wide by about 100 foot long. So, if they were 20 foot wide, and you had two bunks sticking about six foot by say, so that left about 8 foot.
LF: You had a little area, and then you had a space right here, like this is your barracks here, I mean here’s one bed, and here’s one bed. And then right here was your foot locker.
JSC: Your foot locker was at the foot of the bed?
LF: The foot of the bed.
JSC: Okay.
LF: And that’s because when you had inspection—my barracks was, now I don’t know maybe some of the others might have been different—and down the middle was this big heater, I can’t remember whether it was—
JSC: One at each end, maybe?
LF: I believe there was two in each barracks, I’m not sure. I can’t remember but I know that’s how it was heated.
JSC: Okay, let me ask you this, so you had bunks—here’s the wall, with the windows, and you had bunks sticking out like this with a foot locker at the end. My information from a couple of other people is that there were no lockers, but there were like a were like a wooden rack maybe with a coat, with a bar where you could hang things. Do have you have any memory of what it was in between the bunk beds? LF: No, I didn’t remember that, mine didn’t have. Mine had the—all we had was a locker right at the foot.
JSC: Where would you hang your jacket, or coat?
LF: Well, there was a—I guess there was a rack, I can’t quite remember [unclear].
JSC: That’s what their memory is; there may have been a—just a one wooden shelf, with a coat hanger rack.
LF: Yeah, that’s right, they had those, that’s right. I picture it now, I hadn’t thought about where we hang our clothes, but I know inspection came around you had to have your locker open, and every morning you had to make your bed, and they’d come around with a quarter, and they’d throw it on the bed, and if it didn’t bounce, you’d—they’d tear it up. And you’d have to go and make it. You’d come back and you’d find your bed all tore up. They’d go through, you know, and it had to be made perfect, it had to be tight. So, [unclear] quarter head to bounce.
JSC: So was that inspection done every day?
LF: Every morning—you never knew when they was coming through with that. Then we’d have the G.I. inspection, the big inspection. We always knew when that was coming. But the other stuff, you never know when they might come through. Of course, some of them were little corporals, and sergeants that felt their importance, you know, they weren’t important in civilian life and then all of a sudden they had a little power, and they [unclear].
We had a little guy in Miami like that, his name was Noyes, N-o-y-e-s, and he was a real little corporal. And he used to bark, and raise hell with everybody, and they got even with him one time. One night, he’d stand there and yell at everybody, and nobody liked him. He was just disliked. And he had to come down those stairways, in a spiral, you know, real fast. So one night, when they had to, you know, empty the hotel with a call, they came down and they punched him, bang, bang, bang, almost killed him, in the hallway down. And nobody knew what happened, says they came running down and he got in the way. But they punched him, they did, they got even with Sergeant Noyes. His name was N-o-y-e-s, and he was noisy, too. You had a few people like that, you had problems with sometimes. That’s what I mean, the discipline was rigid, which is good. Has to be.
But the barracks, they had to be clean, and they weren’t comfortable, of course you get so that you can sleep on the ground, cement, you learn how to sleep on anything, as part of the training. And if you’re lucky you got the bottom, because there was always two, you know, double bunk. And I never liked the top one, some did, and some didn’t.
JSC: We found some bunk beds, we’re pretty sure they were out here at ORD, they’ve been, they’ve been at—do you remember Palmer Memorial Institute, Charlotte Hawkins Brown ran this out near Burlington? It’s now a state historic site and the state museum has some offices out there, but one person that used to work with us was out there, and one of their old dormitories upstairs they just had a whole bunch of these wooden bunk beds stamped U.S. on them.
LF: They probably got them from here.
JSC: Right. So we’re borrowing one of those, and we are going to re-create a barracks scene. That’s one reason I was asking your memories of what the barracks were like. But that should be real interesting. I think people enjoy seeing—
LF: I wish I had kept all my uniforms, now, I gave them all away.
JSC: Yeah, that would have been great.
LF: All I got is a couple patches; I kept a lot of that stuff, but who ever thought that they’d want to even look at it.
JSC: [laughs] Well, you never know.
LF: Everybody said you’d want to get it behind me, you know, get behind me. But it was fascinating, because I made a lot of friends here, and it was like any Army camp, I mean you don’t have any freedom, you know, my cousin went into the service at the same time I did, he stayed in it, he liked it. Because when I was discharged, they offered me a warrant officer’s commission if I stayed in. And I said, no, I want to get out. I didn’t like the idea of anybody telling me what to do, and when to do it. But my cousin stayed in it, and he’s in Albuquerque, NM, and he had four children, and that didn’t cost him anything, because they had the army hospital down there, and he’s done real well. But he liked the military, but I didn’t, I—
JSC: Well, do you feel like you maybe had a little bit more freedom, given the job you had, and you lived off base, and—
LF: Oh yes, Oh yes. See, by having that job, at first it was difficult because I’d go to the barracks, try to sleep, and I couldn’t get two or three hours sleep. Because I’d be working getting things done, and the other guys would be sleeping, and they’d have to get up at 4:30 and 5:00, you know. Well then, it disturbed me so much, so finally they gave me permission so I could, when I had—sometimes I stayed on the base, and other times, if I worked real late I’d go to the Y [YMCA] and get some sleep.
JSC: Now how would you get around, what was the transportation?
LF: Oh, used to go out on the —walk uptown and take the bus, there used to be a bus on Summit Avenue, go out to the main gain. That’s how we got around. Then of course, so of the fellows had cars, you know, going out.
JSC: Did you ever do other things in or outside of Greensboro, recreation, like, there were various private clubs or country clubs, there were—some people went out to the country park, military people.
LF: Oh yeah, I was invited a lot, out you know. Mrs. Cone—Mrs. Caesar Cone—there used to be—you know where Arby’s is, down there? That’s where their beautiful mansion was there. And she used to come in, or she send her people in, to pick us up, and we’d go to her house, and play cards. And she’d have refreshments for us.
JSC: How many people might that be?
LF: Oh, there’d be about six or eight that would go, you know. And we’d go there, every so often she’d send—and I went several times, and that mansion was gorgeous and the land was beautiful. You don’t remember that, do you?
JSC: I’ve seen pictures of it.
LF: Oh, and when she died, she left word to be have it torn down. And that just made me sick, as that, all that junk up there now, Arby’s—
JSC: Well, what happened in part was that the State of North Carolina took over that land, it’s the interchange of Wendover, so there was some controversy, and, but I don’t think it was so much that she said to tear it down, but the government was going to take the land, that was my understanding of it.
LF: I knew there was some reason for it, but I always felt bad because it was such a beautiful place, and it could’ve made a nice museum, or something, you know. And the land around it—oh, the beautiful trees, and flowers, and shrubs, and it just made me sick when they uprooted all that and put that Chinese restaurant, and that, and all that other stuff. Of course, that’s progress I guess, and commercial things, and you have to have those too, but I just hate to—
JSC: That was a big—a lot of people wanted to see the base close down soon, because there was a lot of development that went on after the war out here, I mean it became a real industrial—the city had paid to bring water out here, all the infrastructure was here, in other words, at the base. So there was a lot of realtors, they were [unclear] —
LF: Well, they made a pile of money, because you see Cone leased this to the government, I’d forget—
JSC: It’s actually fifteen hundred dollars a year. Some people say one dollar, but it was actually fifteen hundred.
LF: So it’s about a dollar an acre or something like that.
JSC: Okay.
LF: See what they did, and the government came in and put in the sewers, and paved the streets, and put in the power lines and all that. So when everyone came back, look at what they had, they call it the Bessemer Improvement Company. Well you know they made a pile of money, of course they’re smart people. It didn’t hurt them to give to the government; they could’ve given it to the government for nothing and made money. But I think most of it, was Bes—they called it Bessemer Improvement after that, you know. They built on; in fact a lot of those barracks, people came out here and lived in them, after the base closed. Because, there was a girl—woman, rather—came to the studio, she was one of my partners to dance with, and she and her husband came from Reidsville or someplace, and she took one of these barracks and made it into an apartment. And several people were living in those little places. Because my mother came to visit, and we went out, we were invited to dinner out there. They just took the barracks and made a little house out of it.
JSC: Did they have to get permission to do that?
LR: I guess they—I don’t know how they—must’ve leased it from the—whoever owned the land. The old barracks. And then of course they were condemned, because, you know, they didn’t last that long, they tore them down. But I remember when Sue Phillips[?] and her husband lived out there. See, living quarters were a premium, then, you couldn’t find any place to live. I had an apartment over here on Elm Street, and they made that—2007 they made that beautiful home that the woman’s husband was a dentist, and he left her in debt, and it’s that 2007 North Elm, that beautiful home, that brick home, and it’s been taken over now and restored back to the way it was. But she cut it all up, and even rented the coal bin out to somebody to live in. And I had an apartment on the front porch, there. In fact, the apartment was the one that Reba had; she was the Red Cross woman that worked out here. And when she left, she told me, and I went in and got the little apartment on the porch, because you couldn’t find a place to live. And they rented everything, so a lot of people live in those barracks for a while. And I don’t know how that was set up, who they rented from or anything, because I didn’t know.
[End of Recording]