WELDER AT OLMSTED AIR BASE
Isla Goodling Long worked at Olmsted Air Base, Middletown, Pennsylvania, as a welder. In the photo of her welding class, she is on the left in the first row.
I don’t know the parts I welded. They gave me parts and I did it. I learned to electric weld, but girls were not allowed to do it. I worked with aluminum, and had to be very careful because it was thin.
I joined the work force because I needed a job when I graduated from high school, and I wanted to help our military. My three brothers and two sisters were all in the war, and we did lose one of them. My parents thought it was good that I could help the war effort. Olmsted Air Base was in Middletown, where I lived, so I lived in a very nice house with my parents. I worked from May 1943 to about June 1945. After the war I worked at RCA in Lancaster, at a shoe factory, and as a waitress.
During the war, we had no gas, so we hitch-hiked. We couldn’t buy nylons, but we wore slacks to weld, so we didn’t need nylons. Being single and living at home, I didn’t need sugar, butter, etc. With my first paycheck I bought a War Bond and started a savings account.
The day the war ended, my fellow workers and I were swimming in the Hershey Park Pool. When we heard the news, we stopped swimming and celebrated.
I was engaged to a boy who joined the Navy. John eventually was sent to the Phillipines and I still kept writing to him. When he came home he said I had to turn Catholic or we could not get married. That caused a problem. We had never discussed this before. I did not ask him to leave his faith and he should not ask me to leave mine. We had a disagreement and he took my diamond off my finger. We still kept dating.
I went to visit my cousin and had to take the Greyhound bus. Coming home the bus was full so I had to stand. Close to Harrisburg, a lady got off so I sat in her seat beside a man. The bus was full, so they would not sell me a ticket to go the last 18 miles—Harrisburg to Elizabethtown. This man I sat beside saw me sitting in the bus station and came to talk to me. The next bus was in three hours so I had to wait. This man sat with me and again the bus was full, so they would not sell me a ticket.
That was 1:00 a.m., so this man Joe stayed there with me all night. At 6:00 a.m. I called my dad to come get me. Joe asked for my phone number and came to see me two days later, a Wednesday. I had a date with my boyfriend John on Friday, and that was the last I saw him. I dated Joe for two months and he gave me a diamond. Two months later we were married.
Friends and family didn’t think it would last. Joe and I were married 58 years and had five children. I did not have to get married, we just wanted to be together.
After our mates died, I called John. I first sent him a card for his 83rd birthday. For the next ten years, when I was in Pennsylvania, we spent time together. We never forgot each other, so it was very nice to be together after sixty years. He died a year ago and I miss calling him. I live in Utah now.