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Show CORA LEE JOHNSON MARCH 6, 2002 remember there was a girl, her name was Hill, I found out later, she was a professional golfer. And they took everyone. Most of our officers and things like that was teachers. Some of them had been taught physical education and things like that. If they did then they were training us along with the Coast Guard men, training us to march and things like that. I have to tell you something I thought was kind of cute. In this girl, she was from West Virginia. She had lived way in the hills. She showed us a picture of her boyfriend. His name was June. We went down to the barracks meeting and we'd sit in a circle on the floor and they'd give us the rules and regulations, training us and things like that. But she carne in, she had a guitar and she just sat over there strumming it and of course that interested me right off the bat. So she started singing: "Corning in on a wing and a prayer"-that tickled me. She sounded just like the hill people. I just thought, it just added. I laughed. You met a lot of people; you met a lot of people. I'll tell you what they did. To start right off with, if you had a college education or even maybe one or two years, you were automatically taken into another area. Now that's the same way with the men, because they did not have time to wait and to see the worth of a person to make them the leaders. So automatically, you would know ifthey'd had an education, they would be put in that select group. Others, such as my brother Frank, he was a third-class petty officer, he was a boatswains mate and they're the leaders, they are the leaders and he next would have been a chief. And I'm sure he told you, he always wished he'd stayed in, but his wife didn't want him too. He always had his heart right in that. You can't talk to him that he I· sn 't a 1w ays relatm· g a lot ofthm. gs. But, anyway, you had to earn yourself. And we had sch oo 1m· g every day. Every day we had class work and they told us, and I do believe this th ·d h ' ey sm t e way they teach, the way the military, well, the way the Coast 30 |
