<Begin Segment 25>

TI: And now long were you in Moses Lake?

MS: Oh, I was there about a year and a half. Oh, gosh. It was a rough place to be because you're in the middle of nowhere and the airmen really wanted to get out and do things. But the other thing that happened to me is I finally got enough money that we could refurbish our Service Club. And one day I went in and we were gonna have a dance, and everything was taken out of my service club. I went over and they said, "Well, we have these cadets that come in in the summertime, and the colonel or general who was in charge had come over and taken my, all my furniture and made it, decorated their room for the cadets. And I'm saying this to Colonel Robinson, "I have a dance coming this weekend." "But Margie..." I said, "Who's got the signature?" and all this stuff. He says, "Well, you're responsible for it," and I said, "Fine. I'm taking it back." I sent the airmen over, and brought all the stuff back, ooh, it hit the fan. Because the general had called the newspapers about this, for his cadets, and found it was it was in shambles and he wanted me fired. [Laughs] So anyway, I just said it really was a hard job, because to get entertainment there to Moses Lake, I had a group of Japanese people coming from Spokane one time, and they put on a big program and so forth. But to keep them entertained and having activities to do, by that time I had enough, and I went home to Yakima and stayed with Kara and Tak. And then from there I went to Santa Rosa.

TI: Which was a pretty dramatic shift for you to go to California from Midwest, West, sort of, Eastern Washington.

MS: Yeah.

TI: So why Santa Rosa?

MS: Because there was a job opening, recreation. I went there.

TI: Okay.

MS: Santa Rosa was kind of interesting. It was a routine kind of place.

TI: And so Marjorie, I want to step through this, because I want to get to some of your other activities. So Santa Rosa and then...

MS: And I went to Anaheim, yes. That was the first, I was the first woman supervisor for them.

TI: And how long was your recreation career?

MS: From Great Falls to Santa Rosa to Anaheim, I was at Anaheim about seven years. It was interesting because I got active with a region. I put out a newsletter for my little region, and then they decided that they wanted me to edit the house organ, the California Parks and Recreation house organ. But I was at the state meeting when they were changing from... there used to be a Parks, California Parks association, California Recreation Department. They decided to merge at that point. And at that meeting they said, "Well, this is California Recreation and Parks." Somebody said, "We can't call it that because that spells 'CRAP.'" [Laughs] So I edited their house organ for two years.

<End Segment 25> - Copyright © 2010 Densho. All Rights Reserved.