<Begin Segment 15>

KL: And you said he was from the Imperial Valley?

KP: El Centro (and Calipatria).

KL: What else do you know about his childhood? Was this family part of the farming business?

KP: No, they were in a service station business, Standard Oil, I think. And they sold tires all during the war. They did really well because they were in the middle of a farming area, and they sold tires to the farmers who were really stressed to provide for the war. Because all the farmers were doing really good at that time, because they needed all that. So he worked the service station, his dad's service station all the way through school, but he went to school in Calipatria because he was really basically raised in Calipatria, which is on the north end of Imperial Valley. Then he was actually born in El Centro. His mother and dad had a dairy for a while before they got into the service station business. They were from, both from Missouri, the Powells were from Missouri.

KL: How did they get to California?

KP: Probably for jobs. The same deal, because his father (Clyde Powell) had worked over in the San Joaquin Valley. One of his (stepfathers) was killed by a covered wagon, drove over him on the farms, over in the Imperial Valley, I mean, over in the San Joachin Valley.

KL: One of his grandfathers?

KP: Yeah. Then they ended up down in the farms in the Imperial Valley. And Raymond said when he was a little kid, they didn't even really have fans to cool off in the summer. They would go to bed and get a sheet wet and put it over them so they could sleep for a while. And then when it dried out, they'd get it wet again so they could actually sleep in the Imperial Valley. Because they didn't have any cooling kind of thing at all when he was a little boy down there. It was an interesting development.

KL: Yeah. How did you and he meet?

KP: Well, actually, his mother brought him over to my house and introduced him to me when I was a senior in high school.

KL: How did you and his mother know each other?

KP: Oh, we were neighbors. They built a motel next to our house when we lived down by the airport. They built a twenty-unit motel, and then they added another ten right away because they were both working twenty-four hours a day and they needed more income so they could actually hire somebody to help 'em. They had somebody to make beds, I'm sure, but they had to add, they could see that they were in a good spot, location, location, location, they always said in the motel business. But they built a motel so you that you could come up here and go fishing. Then he didn't have time to go fishing. [Laughs]

KL: Because he was working so much?

KP: Because he was working so much, yeah.

KL: What hotel is it that they built?

KP: Frontier Best Western, it's still there, and the fourth generation is running it now. Because we ran it for quite a few years, and then my son ran it, the younger son (Martin), and now my grandson (Travis Powell) is running it. So that's pretty interesting. [Laughs]

KL: What were Raymond's parents' names?

KP: Clyde and Alma.

KL: And Alma wanted you two to meet?

KP: Oh, yeah. They both said that I was a worker, that I was a hard worker and they needed a hard worker in the family. They saw me out there working around the house and digging in the garden and loading wood and doing all kinds of things that my dad, since he thought I was the boy in the family, that I could do with him, and the fishing and all that, of course. So anyway, they thought I was a hard worker and that he should meet me. [Laughs] And I loved square dancing. I had been doing square dancing all the way through high school, but he wasn't a dancer particularly. But anyway, he came back and we started dating, and he was getting ready to go to Korea in the war. He did photo reconnaissance in Korea, so he wasn't actually dropping bombs, he was doing the photo recon type of thing, (as a pilot of jets).

<End Segment 15> - Copyright © 2013 Manzanar National Historic Site and Densho. All Rights Reserved.