Col. William F. Roos, Springfield, Virginia: an interview by Professor Daniel McCool: Saving the legacy oral history

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MY NAME IS DANIEL MCCOOL. I AM INTERVIEWING WILLIAM ROO THI MORNING AT HIS HOME IN SPRINGFIELD, VIRGINIA. THE DATE I NOVEMBER 11, 2004. WILLIAM GOES BY BILL. IDS LAST NAME IS PELLED ROOS. DAN: Well, Bill, just to start tell us the day you were born, and we'd like to hear the whole story. BILL: I didn't really know we would back that far. But my parents told me that I was born on June 24, 1919 in Salt Lake City. I came from an old pioneer family whose ancestors had crossed the plains to Utah on foot and by wagon train; and who believed in responsibility, integrity, hard work, self reliance, self sacrifice, obeying the law, paying their debts, educating their children, and living their lives honorably. My dad's family had come over from Sweden. DAN: So Roos is a Swedish name? BILL: That's right. Roos is a Swedish name. In fact, years later my family and I went over to Sweden and just wandered around there. And my dad had told me his family came from a little town called Malmo. And we searched around, and we found Malmo. And one of the things I said to my wife was, "Well, let's look in the phone book and see if there are very many Rooses. And, my gosh, in the phone book of the Rooses in Malmo there were about three pages of ofRooses. There were a lot ofRooses there. So my dad was a full-blooded Swede you might say. And my mother was born in a little town south of Salt Lake called Lehi. DAN: Oh, yes. BILL: And she was from an old pioneer family that had its roots in England. Her maiden name was Worlton, W 0 R L T 0 N. And if you're down there in Lehi you still see a lot ofWorltons living in that little town after all these years. And her mother was Danish. So I'm really a 1