Water Resources: Hydraulics and Hydrology
girls and six fellows. We were all draftsmen, and what we did primarily was ink tracing on
linen, mostly electrical diagrams. Construction of the Third Locks across Panama had been
started before World War II and a lot of excavation had been done. However, German
submarines in the Caribbean were sinking construction materials being shipped to Panama,
and it was decided to stop construction until after the war--just
up the contract
drawings--and that's what we were doing. We were in Panama from February-December
1943.
At that time, they assigned apartments to the two older girls, and the two of us, who were
younger, were assigned to live with the older girls. We lived in Diablo Heights, a relatively
new town on the Pacific side, constructed for the Special Engineering Division. I was
assigned to live with Irene Miller. Irene and I lived and worked together for the next thirty
years until she died. We went back to school together in 1944; we got our engineering
degrees at the same time in February 1947. We worked in a number of Corps offices, and
the Corps was very considerate in that they always placed us together. In those days, no
woman made enough money to live decently by herself, really.
We managed to save enough money while we were in Panama to go back to school. In
Panama we had a choice of either three-dollars-a-day per diem, or twenty-five percent
increase in salary. Three-dollars-a-day was more than twenty-five percent of our salary, so
we lived on our salary and saved our per diem. We came back with about one thousand
dollars each and in the summer of 1944, decided to go back to school and get engineering
degrees. I had had several years of liberal arts, and Irene had attended teachers' college and
had been a teacher before she took a course in drafting in the summer of 1942. She started
working for the Corps in Rock Island about the same time I did, but I didn't really know her
until we were assigned to live together in Panama.
What was Panama like when you were there?
It was very interesting. It was during the war so we had blackouts, and driving was on the
A:
wrong (left) side of the road. It was the first time I'd ever been out of the country so it was
quite an experience. We lived in Diablo Heights, which was a town constructed for the
Special Engineering Division of the Panama Canal Company. Irene and I went back to
Panama twenty-five years later, bird watching. We couldn't believe how much everything
had changed.
Q ..
It changed?
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