Virginia "Gin" Behrends and Nancy Parode

00:03 My name is Nancy. I am 53 years old today's date is April 29th, 2016. We are in Washington DC and I am here with Jim behrends.

00:15 My name is Virginia Lee Barons better known as Jen I am 81 pushing 82 very hard. Today's date is April 29th, 2016. We are in Washington DC and I am with Nan peraud who is a friend of mine.

00:37 Okay.

00:38 We have a long history of telling stories. I'm so excited to be able to hear more of your stories. One of the things I've always wondered is how did Growing Up in a time when girls were expected to play quietly and sit nicely and dress prettily and go out just to be a wife and a mom. How did that affect your life? And and how do you feel now about your childhood? Well, my mother was blindsided. She wanted a baby who would adore her and she could cuddle all day and she got me I'm hyperactive. So yes, I was pretty yes. She dressed me nicely, but I didn't sit still I climb trees. I fell out of trees. I had a Perpetual skinned knees and elbows. I had ideas that weren't consonant with the other girls in the crowd. So in order to be a crowd I had to find a job to do like

01:38 Boys couldn't stand me so and they played around the girls and then you had to tell your boyfriend. All I had to do was go stand and look at one boy. That's the circle would immediately break. So I was I I made myself I learn to make myself useful. The older kids tolerated me. They like me the younger kids looked up to me but my contemporaries have never ever even at 82 they are not comfortable with me. And I think I was a feminist before my time. I was determined. My mother said she only paid for two years of college and a friend of hers said that I should have the four years because I was going to pass on the house and we got into a

02:31 Rebellion little bit one weekend and I told her I was going to finish college and I was going to finish it on her money or on my money and I was going to finish college and that was that.

02:48 A fair bit of wisdom. She decided that with that kind of determination that maybe she better fold in the situation and I couldn't understand when I was working why I couldn't work in certain jobs. I couldn't work certain days. I couldn't work certain hours. And this this all seemed really silly to me because I could think and I could challenge people you're not thinking this through to the end and people didn't like that. They really resented it. So I think I was a feminist long before that had been invented. Not not because I was bored or anything like Bella abzug, but because I was a thinking human being dad go ahead and I should be treated as such.

03:43 Did you ever did you ever get involved in any of the feminist movement or feminist causes?

03:50 I know my next door neighbor who was also a Navy Wife. We we consulted one day and we decided a we needed our bras and be that we as navy wives had just as much Freedom as we could handle because our husbands were gone all the time. We had to take care of kids. We had to mend houses hire people Etc. We had all the freedom we needed and money. I mean, we we handled all the money because husband was a know exactly exactly sure how I definitely still at this because it's an especially then because there weren't computers on ships and there wasn't the internet and so you had to handle everything and make all those decisions and not worry about, you know, I I need time to consult with my husband and male would come in clumps, you know, so I would tell my husband will John's fine. Everything is healed.

04:50 And that letter got to him before the letter explaining what happened as of the next letter. I got said what the hell happened to John and then I said by this time you should have ever had the first letter. He had fallen down on a toy and split his eyebrows when we went to the doctor's house and she mended it with made a butterfly patch out of an old Band-Aid to hold the edges of the cut together and he healed fine. He was fine now. Yeah, you told me recently something. I didn't know which was that your mother decided that you were an artist and today you are a very talented artist you draw and you sculpt and you make beautiful jewelry and many other things probably thinks I don't even know if you could go back in time. Would you still choose to be an artist yourself or would you choose to do something else?

05:41 I I had three I could draw and enjoy drawing. I didn't think of myself as an artist until after I start school and that was because my mother I came to realize as an adult was the real artist and she was the one and and she was good. But when she finally took lessons after retirement and got over the initial phases she did some very nice things, but I had a strong interest in science II used to do experiments, but because I was a girl

06:26 That was just fooling around. But if my brother did it it was important and the other thing that I always loved and considered myself was a dancer. I wanted nothing more than it went at the age of 4. I wanted nothing more than dancing lessons. And finally when I was twelve one of the dance studio was 20 miles away and cost money. We didn't have money. So mother finally one of the students at the studio in Stockton came to Tracy once a week and gave dance lessons tap dance and ballet at a dollar less which my family could afford and so I took tap-dance and because I was twelve and growing

07:23 Probably an inch a month. My body was not always under my full command. So she gave me ballet at half-price to help me be more graceful. I was given genetically I'm a hyperactive. I've got to move. I can't sit still for long periods and I was given the coordination of a slug in the Sun and which I think is extremely unfair

07:55 Well, you know, so do you remember anything about the dances that you did? How long did you study Dance ice Eddie & Tracy before we moved two years. Mom promised. I'd have dance lessons when she remarried and we move but it never happened. So I took in high school. I took folk dance and square dance and for my PE requirement as for 3 years modern dance and when I went to college I took we had to have two years of physical education and we were on a quarter system. So that meant six classes. So I took a modern dance now I didn't take modern dance that was high school. I took square dancing folk dancing social dancing swimming body mechanics and tennis and through

08:55 Social at the engineers all took social dancing and square dancing cuz it was the only way they can meet the girls. Okay, so that is how I met my boyfriend and why I took tennis because he was a big tennis player that class. I got a D because the teacher said you have work and tried so hard I can't in good conscience flunk you but I checked your boyfriend cheating my husband.

09:33 So, you know, there are connections that you are going to see her and for his him and his friends. I have it. I became to all intents and purposes a college-age dead mother, you know, I had four boys.

09:53 Okay. Well, let's go back in time a little bit. But before you met Paul a lot of things happened historically that are really important to the history of our country in the world. Do you remember to say December 7th 1941. Do you remember that particular day very well and it wasn't daytime it was afternoon. I was living with my grandmother Schmick because my father was in the hospital he had high blood pressure and the blood vessels in his eyes had ruptured. So he was in the hospital probably four or five months a long time. I was in second grade. My brother was not yet in school. So I was sent to live with my grandmother. So my mother could she would take the train from Tracy to Oakland and leave my brother with her sister-in-law and then she would go take the ferry.

10:53 To San Francisco and spend the day with my father in the hospital if I had stayed with her and Tracy, of course, she wouldn't have been able to visit him. So I lived with my grandmother probably from the first part of October until Christmas and I remember my grandfather had died earlier in the year. So the kitchen was he they had a chicken ranch and of course like all ranch house has a huge kitchen and I remember the neighbors were over with my grandmother playing I think Quist playing a card game.

11:37 I was sitting the hospital bed had been put in the kitchen for move from the living room to the kitchen and it was supposed to go back somewhere and I was sitting on the hospital bed drawing or reading a book and the grown-ups are across the kitchen and the radio said President Roosevelt came on and now sitting it was as I recall. It was about 5 in the afternoon and I was 7

12:09 And we lived the house was about a mile from the Pacific Ocean from Monterey Bay. And I remember after hearing at everybody right at the other people visiting rushed home and my grandmother rushed around pulling all the shades down and I was convinced that the Japanese were going to come marching up our road my grandmother cell barely my aunt's prevailed upon my grandmother to send me back to my mother they felt she was taking advantage of my grandmother who at that point was 60 and we were at Christmas. My father was well enough that he could leave the hospital.

13:09 Grounds walking so he had to stay close. So my mother rented a room we had our own bathroom and kitchen Privileges and one room and we stayed there Christmas week and my mother made a fireplace out of she had painted butcher paper and folded up his suitcase. We carried all the presents on the train got on the train at 5:30 in the morning and took the train to Oakland and then took the ferry across and then took a bus up to the hospital. So it was quite a track and my brother was only four.

13:49 And she made after Christmas. She made a divider curtain by taping all the paper together and hang it from string so that we would be on the bed having a nap and she and my dad could sit in the front of the room and and visit and I remember my brother got a train set famous names are escaping me today, but so they set it up. It was a simple Circle and it had an engine and the Caboose that had lights and we had blackouts, you know an emergency the sirens went off and everything. So that meant all the curtains had to be pulled and so Dad ran the train while there's a knock at the door. It's the air-raid one. He said

14:44 The lights show around the curtains you'll have to turn the train off. So they are we all sat in the dark, you know, two kids four and seven and two grownups trying to pass time until the all-clear is sounded so that was my Christmas 1941 fun. But at least you were with your with your whole family together. So spending the week there. I'm sure it was.

15:18 As a Navy Wife myself. I know that when I announced I was engaged to

15:25 Steve my husband my mother's first. Was she's going to leave and she's never going to come back and she was not happy about the in fact. That is exactly what happened. How did your mom feel when you came home and said Paul and I are engaged and he's in the Navy and all of that. How did your family feel about you signing up for this adventure that maybe they didn't know that much about

15:49 Well mother and met Paul and she liked it. They they had crossed Road swords a couple time. She she was a backseat driver and he got very exasperated one foot on the brake turn off the ignition. He says fine you dry, and she was

16:11 Gratified but super pissed because he eat we had already arranged things for the he and I had talked back and forth. I had come home and then I type a letter said take this letter to your room. Do not make a sound do not tell anyone about it. Be sure the door is closed and he said his January 18th. Okay for a wedding because I can get off then. Okay, that's fine. I I played the role very nicely and this was like in September so he he he said I've made arrangements with my chief warrant officer for you to come up and stay over Thanksgiving and he said then we can get engaged that weekend. Okay, this is fine. I'm telling my family nothing. I saved my money. I had a checking account that was limited you put money in.

17:11 And when you use up the money they close the account doesn't something doesn't do now so I bought a plane ticket up to Bremerton Washington where his aircraft carrier was being overhauled and I thought use the last check in my checkbook and took the sock that I had and dumped out all these pennies and nickels and dimes and stuff that I had been saving to buy my airplane ticket clerk looked at it. He says been saving for this and why I have you

17:44 And my mother gave me great admonitions if I stayed at a hotel Paul was to not get on the elevator. He was to see me on the elevator. He was not to come to my room, etc. Etc. Etc. So there I was with the family over Thanksgiving and we we had a good time. They were very friendly family had three little kids and cold over in return was so cold. It's one of the two times in my life that I have been utterly miserable because it's been so cold and every day the wife was expecting a mink stole and I was expecting an engagement ring, which was an academy miniature and we kept checking the mail man and nothing came and nothing came and nothing came and I flew home Sunday.

18:41 Engagement without an engagement ring. I can't remember if I told my mother when she picked me up.

18:51 But I remember the first week in December. I was working at Macy's at that time as a cleric and I had an afternoon shift so I didn't go in till noon. So I was snoozing late the mailman came I ran out and there is a little box from Herff Jones cool. I went to the bedroom rapidly opened the box and there was a white flat box inside. I opened the box. It was his wedding ring. It was not my miniature. I was so upset. I threw the box across the room and slid down under the bed and I went back to bed and had myself a good cry.

19:40 Catholic like I had to get up have breakfast get ready to go to work. And as I was leaving the mailman came a second time was another Vox don't dance I open this and yes indeed. It was the right size and it was my miniature. So I wrote a note to the family that the the more Diamond can be seen at Macy's this afternoon if anyone wants to come in put it on and went to work and nobody came to work. They wait till I got home, of course, it wasn't Diamond. It was a miniature and it had the Alexandra which absolutely fascinated me because Outdoors its blue-green indoors is purple, right and this other Lee fascinates me so that ended my mother was pissed because we were getting this is now December first week in December and I'm getting married in six weeks. Which means

20:37 This sucks. She wanted to be the mother of the bride and have a whole year to glory in all the fun. He would have been momzilla and all she had was six weeks and Christmas in in the middle of it. Okay at Macy's I can order invitations and get a discount because I was working there. So we ordered I think two hundred invitations someone one day my sister and my brother and I all set down and fill addressed all the invitations return addresses putting all the property stuff in mother fussed cuz they weren't engraved and she didn't like the wording I said, well, they said that that's the proper wording and that's what they did.

21:26 Mother got home and threw a super hissy fit because we had put return addresses on the invitations.

21:38 She said that's not proper. It will look like you are asking for a gift and that's not good and the next day brought home quite out and we had to fight out of 100 return addresses. I said, how was I said that's nonsense and how we put RSVP in there. How are they going to figure out where does sand RSVP address on it? And I thought oh, well most people newest. They got the gifts to the house cuz I guess you know, my first one was a clock for the wall and our honeymoon subsisted of are moving from after the wedding night in San Francisco driving down Highway 1 2

22:38 Los Angeles and we stayed at his mother's well her side of the family was just livid because they didn't know where to send wedding for us and his mother was livid because she had all these things stacked up on the beds and you know, she was mad at me while I explain to her what had happened and then she was mad at my mother the flowers never came from friends and that they had sent that we know of and so my my mother insisted after the wedding everybody had gone home but a few neighbors and the family and Paul and I had to sit there and unwrapped every single gift that had been brought to the wedding and the reception.

23:37 We were not happy, but you know we did.

23:42 So we talked about that with you know that the wedding from hell, it was really funny many things happened. I wrote in my grandfather's. Kryesore cuz the skirt you never who scare us, right? So I got out of the car father is walking along with his Breviary reading his morning prayers and looks over to see what the commotion is just as I'm getting out of the car and I gathered my hoopskirt together and as I stepped out the thing backed up over my head into his Breviary.

24:20 I mean that was just one thing, you know, the my brother was supposed to bring music for the Carpenters Hall which was the only place very unglamorous. We could hold a reception and they finally got his set up the caterer didn't have enough food. We we were hungry when we got no food. We got a bite of cake and a glass of champagne and that was it.

24:52 All of this

24:54 Her commentary

25:01 She was fluttering around talking to everyone and quite frankly at my reception. I remember not getting enough food and I remember hooking the heel of my shoe and my hoopskirt falling on the floor and everybody, you know, everybody hysterically laughing is Paul picked me up. I also remember the three little cousins holding my skirt up while I was dancing and Paul has this grim look at his face. He was not into children yet my other than my mother's commentary. She she said it looks like you're asking for gifts. You may not do that that is impolite. You will erase all those return addresses that was about she wanted she wanted to shop.

25:55 For a fancy dress and we had to get it in one shopping and

26:04 It it was an attitude. I think that she had rather than specific commentary which was you know, very true typical of my mother and I got 25 years later. I got an idea on having to open the gifts as she said these people were kind enough to buy them and bring them you will give them the satisfaction of opening them. Okay. I said thank you notes and I hope you know after 58 years that I have all the right Chief over the right thing, but when my son got married in Hattiesburg, Mississippi, so nice Southern Girl her mother kindly invited us over to have iced tea before we resumed our trip to the coast. So we're sitting at this huge farm table with Ice-T and we all hauled presence in from various.

27:04 I've been brought to the church and I saw movement out of the corner of my right eye. I was sitting on one side and and my mother was around the corner and I noticed movement over there. And so while continuing the conversation I kept an eye on what was going on. Well, she took her finger and pushed packages of little bit and she would press down on the top of the package is a little bit and she would lift another one just a little bit with her finger and it dawned on me.

27:40 That she she believed in personal property that if other people got packages or mail, you did not open it and here is this room that is full of a beautifully Bratz pocket packages with all kinds of treasures and she didn't dare open them and she she would have had to live with them until I could get back there and open up so nothing would do but they had to be opened.

28:15 I don't know. How was your wedding? Well, we didn't do it the quite like that all the presents went home and after Steven, I got back from our honeymoon. My mom had a present opening party and invited all the relatives to come watch US Open.

28:33 But yeah, it was fun.

28:37 Okay. Skip ahead a little bit, did a lot of deployments in the Navy that this specially because he was in submarines and I've also I've often thought and I think everybody thinks that submarine duty is the toughest duty is the toughest on on the sailors in the officers and it's the toughest on the families when tall was deployed. How did you cope with his deployments and where you lonely and you know, of course you were busy with your boys and all of that but how did you how did you deal with that? We had Wives Club had a coffee once a month and we often got together for dinner. Especially he was on an aircraft carrier for two years and there were a large number of a xan xan's. I think there were seven to ten of us ends until I saw all of them were pregnant and we got together on a very regular basis and comparing stories and husbands and what it was like to be married at that for.

29:37 I had a job for I think a month. I took care of a small child while her mother went to work friend knew about the job and offered it to me and we were so flat ass broke that it was done. I counted the sheets of toilet paper one time to see if they would last till payday. So any job was good and I learned about children. I learn why I do not want a mesh crib because small people like monkeys climb right up that Mitch and go over the side. This is good to know before you have a child and then after that I had kids and they had to be fed. They had to be read to they had to be walked, Sorry you had to go to the commissary and I kept stationary on the dining room table and I would sit down every night and ride a little bit of the day's events and then when I had several pages I would mail them to fall.

30:37 About once a week. And when before we got married, our furniture was entirely almost entirely done by mail. We used to write 30 page letters each other his were typewritten mine were handwritten on both sides discussing philosophy and history and and all kinds of stuff. So it wasn't it was not a problem. I used to say he's turned into a paper person. He's not a real person. He's a person on the other end of this pen and paper and not not really idiot have crying. Of course when he first left and you be kind of Sleepless in the last week before he got home, but the rest of the time was quite busy so I don't remember being lonely. Okay at all. That's that's probably a good thing you've lived in the South several times in different places. We are all standing.

31:37 Mississippi and what have you what was it like being there during the Civil Rights Movement and I did that affect your family life. How did you react to the all of those events? Well when Martin Luther King's wife was there and there was rioting but Charleston is on a peninsula and we lived across the river on a Marshall Islands. So we were not personally affected in any way when they had the riots if we went through downtown we could see guys on the corner with big important looking guns and then Eisenhower said the schools would be all integrated with all due haste and so my kids were in I think second and fourth grade and they they were integrated school and John.

32:37 Younger one. I remember him one little girl. One of the black girl was having trouble and so he helped her and part of it was it was just local hoodlums were setting trash cans on fire and you know causing disruption and Charleston is a very interesting City. It would hold the line on segregation with mules and guns and what have you until the president said You Will & Grace and then they completely integrated they completely flipped at that point and that that was true in Charleston on on many points, but

33:18 A group of nuns for Minnesota came down to help the poor blacks and they ran tutoring in the summer out on our Island and so my next door neighbor and I volunteered to teach and we brought our kids a lot and this was a very it. It was a very educational experience more. So I think for us then for the black kid, have you ever tried to explain to a kid nothing?

33:54 Thinking about trying to explain nothing. This plate is on the table. I take it away. What what do you have now the table and we fell at the end of the summer if we got some say please and thank you and wash their hands before meals that we'd had a very successful summer. So one time my kids came with a Sim played with the kids. So we took two or three is a little kids home out on the far end of the island. And so they asked if the boys could play and I said sure I ask the boys if they wanted to play and the kids just stared at it. They never had white kids in their community and they played rough and I said, that's how they play like puppies. That's not the way you play but that's how they play. So you'll have to play with him that way and one of the kids said, can we touch your hair? And I asked the boys.

34:54 It would you like would you let the little kids touch your hair and they stroked and stroked the boys hair. They had never touched a white person. So, you know this this is it was shocking and I said now if you boys want to you can ask them if you may touch their hair and so they did and the kids left boys touch their hair and they were amazed at the difference in the field, but you know this so I'm not even sure my boys remember this but it was a real education for them and I could meet get to understand why poor people spend money so badly when you don't know when the next meal or when the next money is coming from you take what feels good and with the kids. I was supervising on field trips. I got them to buy peanuts and raisins instead of

35:54 Candy bars. I figured that was that was the best I could do it. I could not I couldn't change the whole South I could just work with what was there right, starting to run out and I have one question. I really wanted to ask and it's this you and Paul over the years have extended your family beyond your biological family in a lot of ways through friendships with my family for example by sponsoring so many midshipmen and being involved in their lives a long after they graduated from the academy so you have

36:28 Hungry cry, I'm sorry you had such a heart. What would you like to tell your family of the heart?

36:36 And I'm so glad they they have enriched Our Lives immeasurably and some of them like the glass piece continue to enrich our lies and they pop up occasionally out of nowhere. We haven't heard we had one turn up last summer that we haven't heard from since he graduated in 99. Wow, and he said I don't know why I haven't done this and he keeps contact with me on Facebook and it isn't just the mids. You know, my Gardener has become like a son for me my housekeeper who's Hispanic has she's a good friend. She teaches me. I teach her art my massage therapist all three of them. It it it just seems to happen that that they they're all people all all people. They're all interesting they all have

37:35 Histories that are slightly different than mine and I find that interesting. I find people interesting my husband. He just kind of slept so I'm just guessing the courtesy of these spends a lot of time at his own head and on the computer. But yeah, so that's the bear clan. Have I ever told you how the bear clan came about? I'm not really sure.

38:04 Perhaps not. Well you either Remember by talking about norb, right? Well, he came over one day when we weren't home which he had permission to do and he left a note and he said yes, it was I who drank your coffee and I who ate your sandwiches and I who slept in your bed and he signed and Goldilocks. Okay graduation comes along and his roommate Eric had an interesting family and was having trouble finding housing on our bed already rented the house close by and I found out from the neighbor that the house across the street was for rent, and we wanted to let Eric know but I forgotten why we couldn't get ahold of it. So I sent a message over to Bancroft Hall tell tell North Curtis key that Mama Bear has found a house in the woods. So we became mama and papa bear cuz we figure any little ones.

39:04 Okay. Well with with just a minute or so left, what would you like to say to wrap this up?

39:12 Well, obviously I haven't been tongue-tied but I think anybody that knows me knows that if you let me open my mouth, you're stuck a long time, but I think it's been great died. I'm thrilled to be part of this really isn't I'm glad that people are recording us. I just hope what they have recorded is still readable in a hundred years. Well, hopefully the Library of Congress will keep up with technology. They've been doing that since the time of Thomas Jefferson and they've managed to make it into the digital age. So I have a feeling I do I core and the American Folklife Center will manage to pull it off.