Olive O'Mara, West Valley City, Utah: an interview by Becky B. Lloyd, June 22, 2002: Saving the legacy tape no. 569 and 570

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OLIVE O'MARA 22 2 2 and I found out later, that you can be emotionally in love with th am laugh ! I did not know it was conceivable. How could you love a woman for the Iov f mik ? That's an impossibility! But I thought later on, it kind of shook, and I thought h if a man had ever asked me I'd have reported him as having-because the war did do things to people. But that shows you how completely, at age twenty-four, I was apart from living in the world. Anyway, I don't know whether I should mention that or not. BEC: I think that's interesting. OLI: But you did have these naive and immature people in the service. It was a different world. Anyway, oh, I better hurry. The thing that got here is finally the war was slowly coming to a close. I'd been here about a year-and-a-half, or something. And these were all-oh, I loved every one of them. BEC: And did that staff pretty much stay the same? OLI: Yes, pretty much. But you could tell the war was winding down. We were winning too many battles. I didn't follow the battles. I was having a ball. The USO would give me free tickets to anything-nothing was too good for the servicemen in the war. So I have pictures of myself being in line there. I got tickets to every Broadway play that ever came there. I was afraid of missing one. Tickets to every ballet and I think it was the Roxy Theater that I went to-you know, one of these great, big, huge theaters in New York. There wasn't a free hour that I didn't run somewhere: the Palisades in New Jersey; Grant's Tomb (laughs); up and down the entire length of Manhattan-not so much Long Island, though I was over there-constantly taking the boat across, especially to the Statue of Liberty and places like that. I don't know where I got the energy, but I ran constantly. And usually always accompanied by either a girl from the barracks or a sailor. 34