Jon Favreau (JF): So what’s the first thing that you think of, what strong memories do you have, of WWII?

Tora Carpenter (TC): The only thing I can remember…I was sick and I was down at my friends on Greenwood St., and believe it or not my mother and father were at the lake taking the raft in..when we heard the news. Can you imagine how cold it must have been? And my brother was in the service, he had gone in to get his year over with, ya know, after college he went in for a year, and then the war came and he was stuck there, for what, five years?

JF: He was overseas for five years during the war?

TC: Well not the whole time. He was over in Germany. And he LOVED the German people. Oh, how he loved the German people. Let’s see, I can remember the blackouts. My father was a warden. In fact up in the shed in the back porch I’ve got the bucket, I’ve got black gravel to put out fires. And I put the shovel down in the cellar. And every house…did every house have to have one? They were supposed to have it. A pail with cinders to put out…if any bomb fell…to put out the fire.

JF: So they had the blackouts when the warden came by and you’d have to shut the lights off?

TC: Oh yeah, oh yeah.

JF: Now how old were both of you when the war started?

TC: Well I’m gonna be 75 and she is 75, so you figure it out (laughter). I was only a first grade teacher I can’t figure that much (laughter). I was born in 1927 and she was born in 1927.

JF: And you were a first grade teacher here in the village?

TC: Yup, 37 years at Quinsig. I had all the Flynns. So…

JF: So how did you talk to the kids in your class about the war?

TC: Well I wasn’t teaching then. No, I must’ve still been in high school cuz I graduated college in ’49, so I must’ve been in high school.

JF: So how did you remember school? Did they talk about the war often or…

TC: I can’t remember doing that at all, no.

JF: Really, not at all?

TC: No.

JF: Um, do you remember, did your family experience any economic hardships during the war or…

TC: No, I mean we had ration books and we went without sugar and the other stuff, but we survived.

JF: Do you think that everyone in the village felt as though they were coming out of the Depression, and spent more, or were people still pretty fearful of spending a lot?

TC: Oh well they hung on to their money for awhile, that’s for sure.

JF: Did you notice a change in that after the war ended?

TC: It must’ve been, yeah.

JF: So your brother went into the service. Did you guys write letters to him and stuff?

TC: Oh sure.

JF: And what did you say to him, and what did he say to you? I know you mentioned him liking the German people….

TC: I really don’t know. He just wrote home and I don’t think he told us too much in the letters, but uh, in fact I’ve got two letters upstairs…I’ll go up and get ‘em and show you.

Florence (F): See, I married her brother…the one in the service, and we were married in 1947.

JF: Had you been dating before he left?

F: No, oh no. We had our first date on New Year’s Eve and…

TC: See, he was an artist (showing me the envelopes)

JF: Would you mind if when I came back to show you the transcript of the interview, if I just took a picture of that so we might be able to put it on the webpage?

TC: Oh sure. Now see this is from, these are from, Ft. Benning Georgia. We always saved those two letters, so I finally had them framed so we wouldn’t lose them.

JF: So what do you think some of the biggest changes in your familiy life were during the war? (silence). Once the war started what was it like to live in the village? (silence.) Was it any different from before?

TC: No, except for the blackouts. And, uh, they would have the air raid siren go off, for testing. And just being frugal.

JF: Um, do you remember the day Pearl Harbor was attacked?

TC: Oh yeah that was a Sunday.

JF: What do you remember about that day?

TC: Just that I was at my friend’s house. Cuz I was sick and my mother and father were out in the lake trying to get the wharf in. And it was one of those things that everybody used it all summer long but when it came time to take it out of the water there was no one around. So they did it themselves, and that was the last year the wharf went in. They didn’t put it in anymore. I don’t think it hit me that hard ya know.

JF: Really?

TC: No.

JF: Did you hear it on the news?

TC: Yeah, on the news.

JF: Were you real surprised? I mean, what was your understanding of why they were attacking us and what was goin on in the world and…

TC: I don’t know, I just think it was an awful thing, but maybe I was too young to understand what it really meant. Of course later I found out that “Tora, Tora, Tora” meant “Kill, Kill, Kill.” They made a film of it. I should have ran out to Lincoln Plaza and stood by the Marquee with my name on it….

JF: Did you listen to the news a lot?

TC: I imagine we did, yeah. But still, because it wasn’t here, I don’t think it made too much of an impression on me.

JF: Because the war wasn’t here?

TC: Right. It was over there.

JF: Now, was your brother drafted?

TC: No, he volunteered. They were asked to give a year of service, so he went in to give his year. And then of course war came on and he stayed in.

JF: So, were you pretty nervous when you found out about Pearl Harbor that your brother would go abroad, or, were your parents pretty nervous?

TC: Well I imagine my mother and father were but I don’t think I was that much.

JF: You thought he’d be OK?

TC: Yeah, I was pretty sure he would be.

JF: Now, what did you guys do for entertainment in the village? During the war, or even during that time in general?

TC: I don’t think we did much of anything. There wasn’t much entertainment down here.

JF: Did you stay in the village? Or did you go into White City or Worcester at all?

TC: Well we’d go to the movies.

JF: Did you go to the theatre that American Steel and Wire owned?

TC: The assembly hall? Oh yes.

JF: Did anyone you know work at American Steel and Wire?

TC: My father did.

JF: What’d he think of the company?

TC: He loved working there. He was a chemist. And he said when they went out on strike that would be the end of the mill. And it was. They never opened it up again.

JF: When did they strike?

TC: Hm, when did they strike? ….

JF: After the war?

TC: Oh yeah after the war. My uncle worked down there, he was a wire drawer, yeah a lot of family members worked there. And they walked back and forth from work cuz it was convenient.

JF: Once the war started, did more women start working the factory? Or did women start taking roles during the war that they hadn’t before?

TC: I would assume that they did, yeah.

F: My Aunt Ethel worked there but I don’t remember much about it. She was a secretary. My father was a cop on the beat.

TC: I never worked I was just a schoolteacher (laughter).

JF: (laughter). Yeah, that’s hard work. My mother’s a schoolteacher…

TC: Was she?

JF: She is, she teachers art, k-5.

TC: Now, Favreau. Isn’t there a man in the family who’s a teacher too? Isn’t there a Favreau up at the junior high?

JF: I’m actually from north of Boston, so….

TC: Oh, ok. Now I can remember one thing about the war, is you couldn’t get butter. I was down at the corner with one of my friends and they got the early margarine, which was white with a capsule which you broke and you mix it, and I thought that was wonderful, I thought it was magic.

JF: (laughter) You liked that? Cuz Penny Copeland said she hated it.

TC: Oh I thought that was magic. You’d put in the capsule and it’d turn yellow just like butter. (laughter)

JF: What was your sense of the enemy? Of the Japanese and the Germans? What did you think we were fighting for?

TC: Well, to keep them from coming over here.

JF: Did you remember listening to any of FDR’s speeches or news addresses?

TC: Just the initial one when he said that we had declared war.

JF: What’d you think of FDR?

TC: I thought he was great.

JF: Do you see any difference between the way you remember the war and the way its portrayed on TV and the movies now? Do movies show that people were more aware of the war or…

TC: I just don’t think it had that much effect on me cuz it wasn’t here, that’s all.

JF: Was there any patriotic memorabilia hanging in windows, or….

TC: Well I can remember the flag in the church with the stars on it for the men that were in the service.

JF: Did you have anything in your house?

TC: No, I don’t think so.

JF: So when did you become a schoolteacher?

TC: I graduated in 1949 and I was sent to Quinsig school in 1953.

JF: Where did you go to college?

TC: Worcester State.

JF: So how was teaching for the first time?

TC: Well I was scared when they told me I was gonna have first graders I thought what in God’s name do you do with first graders how do you make ‘em start? But, you do.

JF: Do you remember teaching them lessons of history, about the war or anything like that?

TC: No. The only thing we did was the Cuban Crisis. And then we had the fire drills and we’d go down to the cellar or up against the wall or under the desk. And I can remember I was subsutiting at the Belmont St. school when they had a drill come through. You had to pull the shades in the classrooms then lead the kids out and shut the door. And I pulled the shade so hard it fell off the wall. (laughter). But I remember that more than I do the real war.

JF: Do you feel that the village as a whole had to make any sacrifices during the war?

TC: Oh sure. I mean we lost fellas. We lost neighbors. They weren’t our age. And we had one family, the Anderson family, who had five boys over there at the same time. They all came home, but that was something to have five boys in one family go.

JF: Those parents must’ve been pretty nervous I can imagine.

TC: Oh yeah.

JF: What do you think has changed about the village from way back when till now?

TC: Well I think it’s gone down hill, terrible.

JF: How so?

TC: Well we use to have stores down here. We had three doctors, we had a dentist, we had our own library, we had a florist, we had two creameries, we had a wonderful, wonderful jewelry store, we had meat markets, we had a first national, we had fruit and vegetable stores, we had a five and ten that was just as good as any woolworth’s and….

JF: And now it’s all gone, huh?

TC: Well, of course the big things came in, like the fair, and no one could compete. And the village is dirty now. I mean I walk a lot, and it drives me crazy to see how dirty it is now. Of course it was all Swedish when we grew up, and my sister-in-law remembers the Swedes washing their front steps—washing them. The village has gone downhill and I don’t like to see it and there’s so many empty stores and…

JF: Were either of you of Swedish descent?

TC: Oh yes, both of us.

JF: Ahm, I know there was a strong Swedish community here. Was there a lot of Swedish spoken here?

TC: Ah, no. My grandmother and grandfather lived downstairs here, and we lived upstairs, and she used to make fun of my mother and father trying to talk Swedish to us so they never did, which was too bad. We never grew up learning Swedish. In fact my grandmother was a midwife, and this was her office. And out in the barn she had her horse and wagon and she delivered more babies one year than the hospitals in Worcester.

JF: Most babies from the village?

TC: Most of them yeah. And I have her birth records upstairs. We’ve been here how long? I’ve been here 75.

JF: Did your parents emigrate here from Sweden?

TC: No they were born here.

JF: So their grandparents came here then?

TC: Yes. My grandmother and grandfather on my father’s side came from Sweden and my grandmother and grandfather on my mother’s side came from Sweden to here.

JF: Now Sweden was neutral during the war. Did that have any effect on the Swedish community here?

TC: No.

JF: Did all the different ethnic communities integrate pretty well?

TC: Oh no, not the Irish (polite laughter). Course all the Swedes worked at the mill that’s what they came here for, and then when the mill closed they went elsewhere. Now you have to look hard to find a Swede. But in our church we’ve kept up a tradition—we have—on Mother’s Day, someone will sing “Moola la mor” Mother little mother—in Swedish, and the closest Sunday to May we do a welcoming May in Swedish. We don’t know what we’re singing but we do it. And we have the Lucia bride at Christmas time. So, there’s that.

JF: But you had said that with the Irish there was tension?

TC: You know, a little bit, but uh…its just….

JF: Did they live in the village or somewhere else?

TC: Oh I think they lived up on Vernon Hill. Well when the mills closed the Swedes lost their jobs and they went elsewhere so…

F: See, I was just like you. My grandparents came from Sweden, my mother’s side and my father’s side. But when they came here they all changed their last names.

JF: Why did they do that?

F: Who knows (laughter). They were, what did I say, they changed their names to “Ferdeen” and they lived up on 18 Steele St. As a matter of fact, he and his two brothers built that house, my grandfather and his two brothers. And of course my other grandparents lived down on Millbury Rd.

JF: So both sets of your grandparents must’ve been some of the first Swedes here.

TC: My grandfather worked for Crompton Noles. He was a cabinet maker.

JF: How long did your father work for American Steel and Wire, his whole life?

TC: Yeah, until he retired and went into consulting work.

JF: So what did your mother do?

TC: My mother? At first she worked in the bakery down here in the village, but she didn’t work after she married. In fact, I can remember I came home, in junior high I think, and of course my mother was always home, but one day they had at the Salvation Army women rolling bandages, and my mother was down there one day when I came home from school and she wasn’t here and she was supposed to be there when I came home and she wasn’t and I was so mad, and I’ll never forget that.

JF: Did you or your parents during the war belong to any civic groups or organizations in the village, whether it be church life or something more?

TC: Well my mother was a Red Cross worker, that’s all.

JF: When your brother came back from the war did he talk about it a lot? What kind of memories of the war did he have?

TC: Just that he liked the German people.

JF: Was he in combat?

TC: No he was in intelligence. He was, he learned, a crash course in German where they could only speak, write, and read only in German, so he was more or less, not a spy but intelligence over there. And see Swedish is kinda close to German.

JF: He spoke Swedish?

TC: No, just from when we was younger.

JF: Do you remember D-Day?

TC: Oh yeah I was in Boston, with all the Hogans cuz they had just come home from the Navy…Carl and Oscar, and I don’t know how we ever got down there but we were there.

JF: Did you guys drive around a lot?

TC: Oh no we put the car up on blocks during the wintertime. Actually so you’d save on insurance and everything else. My father walked back and forth to work so he didn’t use it very much.

JF: What’d you think of Worcester as a whole? Did you go downtown a lot?

TC: I haven’t gone downtown in how many years? I don’t think I have for a while.

JF: What about back then? Was there a vibrant community?

TC: Well I like the individual shops, but I don’t like the mall. For one thing I don’t like the smell—all that incense and candles—I don’t like the smell. And I wouldn’t go downtown and pay to park in that garage.

JF: Now you were speaking of Boston, did you ever take day trips to Boston?

TC: No, not really at all. I was just down there with the boys.

JF: Which boys?

TC: They were from East Brookfield.

JF: They had been in the war?

TC: Yeah.

JF: Had you known them from high school?

TC: No, we had a summer place near there house.

JF: So what did you think of when you heard it was D-Day?

TC: Well I was glad it was over.

JF: When did your brother come home?

TC: He came home in November. Didn’t he come home on my mother’s bday? Yeah, he came home either the 12th or 11th of November, and I can remember she said that was the best birthday present she had ever had.

JF: Now, do you remember being afraid during the war at all? Cuz I remember Penney had said that the blackouts and stuff scared her? Did you ever think we’d be attacked or anything?

TC: No, no no.

JF: What do you think made you so confident we’d be OK?

TC: Just ignorance probably. All I can remember is that my father would say “they’ll come hit Norton company and then the mill.”

JF: So you didn’t listen to the news much?

TC: No.

JF: Do you think a lot of people in your high school didn’t listen much?

TC: I have no idea.

JF: So people in your social circles didn’t really talk about the war?

TC: Right. No they didn’t.

JF: Is there anything else you guys would like to share about the forties or the war?

TC: The village was a wonderful place to live. We had everything here—doctors, dentists, creamery, libraries—everything.

JF: When did it start changing?

TC: I think it was when they built the fair—it was like a Wal-Mart, and you could buy everything there…right up the corner of Greenwood St. and the cut-off. And the little markets couldn’t keep up with them, and they all had to close. They couldn’t keep up, so they closed. And we had one of the best markets that was Anderson Sundquist. Ohhhh, that was great! People would come around Christmas time to get their meats. And they’d be standing out around the corner in lines. They had the Swedish meats and sausages and fish and oooh that was great!

JF: So that must’ve been a real source of socializing, all those little markets. Where did you guys hang out for fun?

TC: We didn’t I don’t think. Well, I was only in high school for 3 and a half years…I doubled-up, they called it. So I graduated early and never made it in with the regular people..I shouldn’t say regular but….well, we had our church groups.

JF: Did you go to church regularly?

TC: Every Sunday, I still do.

JF: Did you do anything church-related outside of church?

TC: Well, the choir, and the youth fellowship, and later on the women’s society, I’m still in that.

JF: What’s the women’s society?

TC: Once a month, women getting together to talk, I don’t go anymore cuz they do it at night and I don’t drive.

JF: What about when you use to go?

TC: Well we’d have speakers and demonstrators come in, bakesales and whatnot.

JF: What were some of the speakers talking about?

TC: Well we had them come from the Friendly House and the PIP Shelter and all those places. We had them down for a spaghetti supper once.

JF: Did they have this society during the war?

TC: Oh yeah, my mother was in it.

JF: Did they do the same kind of thing? Charitable work? Swedish?

TC: Oh yeah, same thing. Oh yeah, you had to look far and wide to find anyone who was NOT Swedish back then.

JF: All right well I think that’s about it. Thank you so much for all your help.

TC: I don’t know how helpful we were.

JF: Oh no, any memory’s a good memory.