World War, 1939-1945

Rosalie Abney recounts her experiences working on airplanes at Curtiss-Wright, including the training she received at Ahrens Trade School. She discusses working conditions, women’s expectations with regard to the closing of the plant at the end of the war, and her perception of the influence these experiences had on women working outside home after the war.

The interview includes Ackerly's recollections of World War I and its influence on his career; his medical education at Yale University (MD 1925); work with the Yale Institute for Human Relations until he came to Louisville in 1933; the Louisville Child Guidance Clinic beginning in the 1930s; the development of the Dept. of Psychiatry of the University of Louisville beginning in the late 1930s; Ackerly's work with Barry Bingham, Sr. in publishing They Can be Cured (1937) with the subsequent passage of the Chandler-Wallace Act reforming Kentucky's state-supported mental hospitals; the accelerated medical training program at the University of Louisville in World War II; the advent of the Psychiatrist in Residence at the University of Louisville during the 1960s and 1970s.

Veterans History Project

Veterans History Project

Veterans History Project

Everylee Ashby discusses her employment, primarily with High Rock Bottling, DuPont and Reynolds, during the war. Ms. Ashby was one of the first two black women hired at the DuPont plant; she also describes an integrated workplace at Reynolds. She also describes her life after her husband returned from the war, and attitudes toward work during the war.

Virginia Bale shared her experiences as a working woman during World War II. Born in Larue County, Bales moved to Louisville in 1942, at the height of the war. She initially worked at Stewart's before securing a job at Curtiss-Wright, a defense company, through a connection. Bales worked in the maintenance department, checking tools in and out. She noted that while there were many women working in the plant, there were more men. After the war, she attended beauty school and worked as a manicurist for many years. Bales believes that the war gave women the idea that they could work and hold a job, leading to an increase in working women today.

Born in 1931, Mary Jane grew up in Madison, Indiana, moving between there and Corydon due to her father's job as a manager of various grocery stores. She recalls her childhood as innocent and normal, despite the war. Her family listened to the radio for news about the war and her father predicted the U.S. would join the war. When the U.S. did enter the war, Mary Jane's five male cousins and her brother-in-law enlisted. Her father also took a job at the Charleston powder plant, which manufactured ammunition powder. Mary Jane recalls the community of Madison becoming closer during the war and the town being considered a typical American town. She also mentions her uncle's involvement in the Manhattan Project, which he believed was for peaceful purposes until the atomic bomb was dropped.

Benovitz discusses her grandparents, Lithuanian immigrants, and her grandfather's work as a peddler; her father's dry goods business and the family's life in Carrollton, Mississippi, where they lived for twenty years before returning to Louisville in 1923; her husband's business in New Albany, which operated from 1941 until 1966; the Depression of the 1930s, World War II, and recent changes in the local Jewish community.

Harold Berg grew up in Brooklyn, New York, where he attended elementary and secondary school. His parents had come to the US from Russia. Berg's father attended trade school and worked as a plumber in New York. Harold came to Louisville to attend the University of Louisville for his pre-medical and medical education. Berg received his MD and completed his internship before being drafted in the US Army during World War II. He served in the Pacific Theater as a surgeon and after the war returned to the US to complete his residency in surgery. Since 1951 he has practiced in Louisville. Berg is also known for his work in mosaics, examples of which were on display at the Jewish Community Center and the School of Medicine at the University of Louisville at the time of the interview.