Hilda Sechs. My maiden name which I had for seventeen years was Aromovitz.

Growing up I lived on Dorchester Street. That’s where I was born but we moved all over. When I was seventeen I met a man in the service.

I worked at the Handi Pads when it was there. I think its still there an old wooden building I think part of it is still there. It’s where we would make iodine for the service men. I was the one who sealed the iodine capsules and those were shipped out for kits for the servicemen to carry with them. I got paid thirty-five cents an hour until I got a raise for I think eight cents.

I left school because we didn’t have the money. Beautiful. It was mostly women working there. I met a lot of friends there. The pay was very good, to me it was. We had to walk from Grafton Square all the way to Webster Street. I didn’t have money for the trolley so I had to walk.

The third year. Then I met my husband Butch Evans, he was in the service, and we would go to the dances and I was married when I was seventeen years old.

Oh sure I remember those. We used to have to get under the desks and all that when the sirens went off. We didn’t see ourselves in danger or anything. We used to talk and gossip to each during the drills. We were still young and didn’t realize yet what was going on. We learned in a couple of years though when friends began to leave and even my own husband. He left soon after we were married when I had just left school.

We were all having breakfast, Sunday morning. It didn’t sink in. To me, I was still a kid, when that happened so I didn’t fully realize what was going on . It was terrible. My father started screaming and he wasn’t even from this country. He was from Poland, my mother too. And they made eight of us.

My father owned New England Upholstery. There were three partners but in the end he owned it alone. When he first came over he did anything he could, frame shoes in Framingham. My mother was left in Poland for eight years. And he left her pregnant. Two boys and my sister who met her father when she was eight years old. He sent for them and it took him eight years to raise the money for all of them and my grandmother to come over.

No I wouldn’t say it changed. We talked a lot about it. Of course we were still young, we were still in school. I was fifteen, sixteen so we were still young.

My husband. When the war broke out he was already in the service. And we were married he was in the service so he came home for a weekend for the wedding and then he left me again, left me pregnant. Thank god he came back.

I had that job already. I worked for two years at Handi Pads and then I went onto Cornell Dudleys after I had two kids. It was on the corner of Grafton and Franklin Streets. You know we made condensers for airplanes, radios, televisions and I ran four machines. I always worked because my husband was disabled so I worked nights, days, whenever I could. I worked there for ten years and then they closed down. The rates were going up and we wouldn’t join the union so they moved to South Carolina. Then I moved to Sprague Electric, I worked there for fifteen years and that’s where I retired from.

That’s why I went to Cornell Dudleys. When the Handi Pads closed I joined Cornells and made more money there. Everything had to do with what they manufactured. Everything today with computers and microchips. I was working with those way back then. Then I went onto Sprague Electric and I got a five thousand dollar for an invention I created there. It was a pen with a pin on it for cleaning microchips of dust that would otherwise be unused. I saved 85 or 90 chips out of one hundred so they paid me a five thousand dollar bonus.

Oh sure. Oh please. Of course I did. I didn’t realize until after how many dumb Jewish people who would let themselves be taken. My father used to tell us all these things. Probably older people knew too. They didn’t know they were burned, how bad it was.

I didn’t hate them. I didn’t agree with putting the Japanese in prisons in California. They weren’t involved. It wasn’t them. They were United States citizens. They shouldn’t have been put in camps. My friends all agreed with that. Definitely. I really didn’t. You know I am Jewish so you always still hear different things. Some people aren’t broad-minded. They don’t understand, different religions. We were prosecuted for so years and years. Look at today the fighting going on in Israel and Arab countries. The Middle East hasn’t changed. They’re still fighting with each other.

Of course its changed. The living conditions are better. Who would have thought I would ever own my home? Things like that have changed. It is strange.

Oh yeah. Yes big effect. Everybody went to work doing various job. It carried onto my son. I have to give him a lot of credit. He went into the service. We lived in the projects. Do you know where they are? You should get someone to take you down there to see them. When I drive down there now I want to die. Someone should take you down to see the projects. Terrible, terrible. When we lived there it was beautiful. It’s on West Boylston Street. It was a place where low-income houses were. I met so many people down there since we were all in the same boat. That’s where my son enlisted, went into the Marines. He didn’t graduate either. He never went through school, never went to college and he is a part-owner in Yellow Cab Company. I just wanted to tell you that. I’m very proud.

I always worked. I had to keep working. It was a rough life for us. My husband was disabled. For twenty five years my husband had a bad heart and had five heart attacks until he died of a stroke. So that was my life. I had to work and I bought a home, I’ve had it for thirty nine years, everything.

I don’t know. Some girls kept working and others were married like me and had kids so they stayed home and their husbands went to work. I never had that choice I had to work because my husband could not.

They are terrible now. That’s where minorities live. You hear about all the killings and fighting. I’m just glad they’re all in one group there. It was beautiful when we were there. You wouldn’t see a piece of garbage on the ground Beautiful gardens in your front yards. Clothes on the line. Now they paint their windows black. I took my friend down there, I just cant believe it.

I lived there during the war. Then there was the tornado in 1956 and all the houses were damaged.

Were there any longstanding effects of the war in your mind?

No I wouldn’t say so. I was so busy with work and kids I didn’t have time to notice what was going on with the world. I guess the jobs were there as a result of the war, there was always work to be done.

You’re very welcome.