Engineer Memoirs
Life isn't black and white. There are many grey areas, and I don't wish to sound as
dogmatic as many of my friends and family think I am.
But there always has to be a goal. There has to be a driving force. I don't think a family
unit can have two driving forces. I don't know if I've been very articulate about that
or not. But that's the way I feel.
Q:
I've never done an interview with the spouse of an officer before. I've done 80 or a
hundred with soldiers--both active and retired. So, I'm not sure I'm doing a good job
of this.
And I only have one question left, and it's really--you've obviously been thinking about
our conversation beforehand. What questions should I have asked you? What do you
want to talk about? What's important that I've missed?
A:
Oh, I think that you have certainly hit the important thing, which was my reaction to
Ernie's career, both as a mother to our children and as his wife. That, I felt, was the
most important thing.
I can certainly sum it up that I have found all of the moves a challenge, a learning
experience--there was something different I had to learn in all of them.
The first one, I had to learn French. The second one, I had to learn to be a wife and a
mother. I came home with two children. I had had household help the three years we
lived in France--had a live-in Dutch girl. Suddenly, there I was confronted with being
a housewife with two little children. That took some learning!
When Ernie was in Korea, I had to learn to be on my own. The next year, we went out
to California. Then we learned how to plant grass and take care of lawns and pour
concrete and do a few things like that. That was fun. We enjoyed that--those five years
out there.
Q:
That was kind of an academic environment out there, wasn't it?
A:
Well, not really a structured academic environment, no. There were probably more
Ph.D.s per capita than any place in the world, including college campuses. But it wasn't
the academic environment as such. It meant the schools were very good because most
of the children's fathers had advanced degree and were scientists.
All of this includes learning to move and learning to have the children be very self-
sufficient. And they were very lucky. I admit we had a lot of luck. The three boys, as
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