Kelsey: When and where were you born
and raised?
Varga: I was born in
Wharton and I grew up and lived in a
house, the first house in
Jefferson
Township outside of
Wharton, on West Dewey Avenue.
Kelsey: Tell me a little bit about
your family background. What did your
parents do?
Varga: My father worked for the
Lackawanna
Railroad. He was a
ticket agent. First he was a substitute, so he
served
in stations from
New York,
Hoboken, to
Dover. My mother was a homemaker.
Kelsey: Did you have any brothers
and sisters?
Varga: No, I’m an only child.
Kelsey: Did any other family members live with you?
Varga: No.
Kelsey: So would you say you lived
in a small town?
Varga: Very small. I lived
outside a very small town. My grandmother lived two doors away
with my grandfather and my
Aunt Emma. There were not
many houses on the street at that time.
Kelsey: Describe the schools you
attended.
Varga: Well, I walked to
Wharton schools. I was an adult before I
realized I was a tuition student who
was never told I was a tuition student, nor offered
a school bus ride.
Kelsey: And what’s a tuition
student?
Varga: Well,
Jefferson Township was where we paid our taxes,
so I’m sure that they had to
pay money to
Wharton for me to go
there.
Kelsey: And where did you go to high
school?
Varga: Wharton High
School.
Kelsey: What kind of classes did you
take in high school?
Varga: I took college preparatory
classes.
Kelsey: So you did want to go to
college?
Varga: I did. I took typing. I was
told that there was no money to send me to college.
At that time, there was no
guidance department or anyone to help me, so I went
to work. We were offered a part-time job at
Picatinny
Arsenal, I think when I was seventeen, in March.
Kelsey: What year did you graduate
from high school?
Varga: In 1944.
Kelsey: Did your family belong to any organizations or a church or social
club?
Varga: I really don’t think so. I
went to church. I went with my grandparents and my
aunt, to the Luxemburg
Presbyterian Church
. Did I belong to any clubs? No.
Kelsey: And what about your parents?
Varga: No.
Kelsey: Was your father in a
union?
Varga: He probably had to join a
union at the end of his work life, yes.
Kelsey: How were you and your family
affected by the
Depression?
Varga: Well, my father always had a job. I think he worked twenty-seven
years, seven days a
week. That’s a lot of work. We were poor. I had
one pair of shoes. My winter coat was a snow
jacket. People
around me were the same or even more poor. You
really didn’t think about it.
Kelsey: Do you think because of the
Depression that was why you weren’t
able to go to college?
Varga: I wouldn’t imagine that my
father would have ever
had enough money to send me to college,
but I wasn’t guided to scholarships. I’m currently
the chairman of a scholarship committee, so I always think
about that, how
important that is.
Kelsey: So you stayed in your same
house, you never had to leave your home or anything
like that?
Varga: Until I married, I stayed
there.
Kelsey: Did your family have to take in any other relatives or family
members because they had lost their
homes or their jobs?
Varga: No.
Kelsey: All right. And you would
characterize your level as “poor.”
Varga: Poor, but with an employed
father, yes.
Kelsey: When
World War II started,
were you still in school?
Varga: Yes.
Kelsey: And what grade were you in?
Varga: Well, when did the war start,
1941? So I would have been in my freshman year of
high school.
Kelsey: And you were not married at
the start of the war?
Varga: No.
Kelsey: Did you find a boyfriend or
a fiancé at some point during the war years?
Varga: No, it was after the war.
Kelsey: So you met your husband after the war was over. Did you have any friends or family who got married during the
war?
Varga: No. Well, remember, when you
said the beginning of the war, I would have been,
what, thirteen, fourteen years
old. Let’s say a year or so after we were out of
high school, one of my friends married, but no one
my age was getting married at that time—I don’t know
whether it would be legal! (laughs)
Kelsey: You had a friend who got
married a few years into the war. What was that
wedding like?
Varga: Well, the war was over by
then. It was a simple wedding, [she] was dressed in
a beautiful gown, and two of us
were her bridesmaids, and we had a small reception
afterwards. Simple. Weddings weren’t big
productions
then.
Kelsey: Now, during the war, did you
continue to live in
Wharton?
Varga: Yes, I was going to school,
with a
Wharton mailing address, right.
Kelsey: And you went to work at
Picatinny?
Varga: I did. One of the great
things was the bus to
Picatinny
stopped at my door, right in front of my house.
Everything else was a mile away. I don’t think we
paid money to
ride that bus, either. Free transportation, to my
knowledge. I never remember paying at all.
Kelsey: Do you have any idea who
would have funded the transportation?
Varga: No, I don’t remember any
discussion about it, but my mother was already working at the
arsenal then, and so we both got on the bus.
Kelsey: Were you still in high
school when you went to work there?
Varga: I worked on Saturdays, yes.
Kelsey: What made you decide to go
to work?
Varga: It was an opportunity. I had
no money, I had nothing. It was an interesting
offer.
Kelsey: How did you find out about
the job?
Varga: I think they must have told
us in high school, and offered us employment. And
then when I graduated, I had the
option of training to become a draftswoman, so I
took advantage of that. Going back to
the bus, the interesting
thing about the bus, as I recall it, I was
the last to get on, and I either sat on a board
between the two front seats,
with a freestanding
kerosene heater in
front of me, or if that was taken, I stood in the
stairwell by the kerosene
heater. That’s
different!
Kelsey: And how many people did the
bus hold, about? How many people squeezed onto the
bus?
Varga: I don’t know, probably forty
or so. It was packed.
Kelsey: Do you remember seeing any
posters or newsreels or hearing on the radio that
was encouraging particularly
women to work in the factories, or to join the
military once the war was in full swing?
Varga: I don’t truly remember.
There was no television—at least not available to
me—at that time. So our news of the
war came through the papers and the news reports at
the movies. My mother went to
work
for the first time since
she was married.
Kelsey: Did she mention to you, did
you talk about why she had decided to go to work?
Varga: Perhaps we didn’t all talk as
intimately as families do today. It was an
opportunity for her to have money of her
own, because a woman’s role was not the same at that
time: long days of work, and very little money left
over.
So I guess she took advantage of the opportunity,
the same as I did.
Kelsey: So would you say it gave
both of you an opportunity to be more independent?
Varga: Yes. I guess we didn’t think
about it, but as we worked, we did become
more independent.
Kelsey: Do you remember hearing or
seeing references at that time about
Rosie the
Riveter?
Varga: Yes, I do. I can remember my
mother bought an outfit for me.
It was like a brown flannel
shirt and brown
slacks. And slacks were just coming
in at that time. And I can remember people calling
me
Rosie the Riveter
when I
wore it.
Kelsey: Did you think of yourself as
a
Rosie?
Varga: No, I didn’t.
Kelsey: And why didn’t you?
Varga: I don’t know. We didn’t
refer to ourselves as
Rosies. We weren’t riveting
or doing manual labor—I wasn’t. My
mother worked on the line.
Kelsey: Do you think she thought of
herself as a
Rosie?
Varga: I’m not sure, I truly am not.
Kelsey: Do you think she was aware
of the advertising and the
Rosie the Riveter icon that was
developed during the war
to encourage women to work?
Varga: I’m not sure, truly.
Kelsey: Now I’m going to ask you
some questions that describe what you did at work.
Varga: All right.
Kelsey: What kind of training were
you given?
Varga: Very little, as I remember.
I went in as a clerk typist. I really don’t know
what happened, but what appeared to
have happened was that someone hastily took the
gauges—I worked in gauge design—and put them, or
dumped
them, in the building next door. And so my job was
to type—and there I got instruction—type a card, on
my first
electric typewriter that I’d ever seen, and type
these cards that would go with each gauge, so they
could be put
away, filed away, properly.
Kelsey: And the cards stayed with
the gauge?
Varga: Yes.
Kelsey: So that was the first job
that you did.
Varga: That’s the first job I did.
Kelsey: And that was while you were
still in high school, working on the weekends.
Varga: Yes, right.
Kelsey: And then when you graduated
from high school, you changed jobs?
Varga: At a given point, after I
graduated, and I was working at
Picatinny,
Picatinny offered to train us to be
gauge
draftsmen. So there was an in-house
training. The previous
year they had invited at least—I don’t know how
many
schools they invited them from—but they had invited graduates to attend classes at
Dover High School
and they had paid them as they were
learning. And then they went to the arsenal and they were
stationed in
different spots. We were given
on-the-job training, so we were paid because we were employed.
And then I went to work for a checker. A checker
had about four to five people working for him or
her. And we
were put into a large drafting
room—very, very big in my eyes—which had big banks
of fluorescent lights. The
light bounced off of
starched linen drafting paper, which probably
started our first eye problems. So that’s where I
went after I had
finished my course. And that’s what I was doing
when the war was ended.
Kelsey: Did you think that the
training was sufficient for you to be able to do the
job?
Varga: I knew that the war effort
could[n’t?] depend upon me. I did what I was told.
I did not chose to go on for a
drafting career after that. And one other thing,
you learned to work at the arsenal, because every
week you had
to do a written report of what you’d accomplished
during the week. Do you understand?
Kelsey: Yes, I do.
Varga: So that you formed ideas of
what work was about, and which side you were going
to be on. You couldn’t be a
goof off, and what would you say at the end? You’d
have to manufacture what you did.
Kelsey: And who were these reports
turned in to?
Varga: Heaven knows. They collected
them, and I don’t know, but it was a procedure.
Kelsey: Did they need to be a
certain length?
Varga: I think simply you had to
summarize what you did for the week.
Kelsey: And you have no idea where
they kept them?
Varga: No.
Kelsey: What did you like most about
your work?
Varga: I think there’s a sense of
accomplishment in going to work and doing your job,
and finishing your job.
Kelsey: And what did you like the
least?
Varga: I don’t think I disliked
anything. Perhaps you form ideas of what you want
to do and what you don’t want to do in
life, at a time like that. I never went back to
work at
Picatinny after the
war was over
and I was dismissed—but
some people did.
Kelsey: So the experience that you
had working as a draftsperson sort of made you feel
that you wanted to pursue other
things?
Varga: Other things, yeah. And it
gave me the money to do it. So I sent myself to
secretarial school.
Kelsey: What kinds of rules were you
required to follow?
Varga: The most discipline I saw was
in the interview. How’s about that? (chuckles) I
mean, once you were inside
there were military and civilian personnel. With my
background, I had no problems of discipline.
Kelsey: Your background?
Varga: Well, my upbringing in my
home. I was not a rabble-rouser or looking for
trouble. I did my job and went home.
In some terms, that was dull, you know.
Kelsey: Were there security
regulations that you all had to follow?
Varga: Yes. I think we all had an
I.D., and we went through the gate, hordes,
thousands of people. That was
impressive, the sheer number of people.
Kelsey: Did they tell you things
like you shouldn’t talk about what you’re doing
there? Or the “loose lips sink ships” sort
of?
Varga: I don’t remember that, but I
remember that my mother’s
letters from her own mother in
Nova Scotia were all
censored. Each one was read.
Kelsey: These were your mother’s letters that she wrote?
Varga: That she received from
Nova Scotia. I remember the “lights
out,” and I remember traveling to
Nova Scotia on a train where one side had all the
shades down. We were all very aware how the war was
affecting us.
Kelsey: Did you have to wear any
special clothing?
Varga: No. No, I did not.
Kelsey: So you wore just your
regular street clothes to work?
Varga: Right.
Kelsey: Did you have any kind of a
coat or anything that you put over your clothing, or
you just worked in your….
Varga: No, I was sitting at a
drafting table.
Kelsey: Did working in a factory pay
better than other jobs you might have taken?
Varga: Well, I think of it as an
arsenal. I know that the pay was a lot better than
if I went to work in the five-and-ten.
Girls did that, went to
Dover and worked
in one of their five-and-tens so many days a week,
and on
Saturdays. And I was doing better than that, by
working one day a week. And when I look at it now,
you could
say that I didn’t earn much money, but what I did
earn was mine.
Kelsey: Did you feel your jobs were
important?
Varga: I feel it more now, looking
back. I think it was important.
Kelsey: And why do you think it was?
Varga: I think we all pulled
together at that time. The war influenced what you
ate, the gas in your car, I told you about
the lights,
the press and news, the people going to war, the
casualties. So you knew it was an uncertain time.
Kelsey: Were you ever promoted or
given a raise?
Varga: I was, but I don’t seem to be
able to find the papers that prove it.
Kelsey: [We’ll take your word.]
Varga: You believe me.
Kelsey: Were your other coworkers,
were a number of them promoted or given a raise?
Varga: I don’t think it was
promotion, I think it was just an increase, a small
amount of money.
Kelsey: Were there any women
supervisors or managers?
Varga: There might have been, but I
think most of them were male. There were women in
the room, but most of the
supervisors were male.
Kelsey: Do you remember any women
[supervisors] at all?
Varga: As supervisors, no. In my
memory I cannot.
Kelsey: But you mentioned that you
were a checker and you were checking the work of….
Varga: Well, no, we worked under a
checker, a male checker. I spoke this morning to
someone that I worked with, who
was a draftswoman under the checker, and he would
give out assignments, check our work.
Kelsey: And were all of the people
who did that job, men?
Varga: Well, I think. As I
say, I can’t remember any women checkers, but there
were men and women in the room.
Kelsey: Were there men who were also
doing the same sort of work that you were doing?
Varga: Yes. They were older men,
too—men who perhaps, say, weren’t in the war. Maybe
they were
4-F or something.
Kelsey: Or men who were too old,
like maybe in their fifties or sixties, who would
have been too old to have been
drafted.
Do you have
any idea if before the war, the jobs that you and
the other women were doing at
Picatinny, do you
have any idea if
those were done mostly by men before the war?
Varga: I really don’t know. I knew
that the previous year a number of new high school
graduates had been
employed/trained.
Kelsey: And what year was that?
Varga: That would be ’43. And they
went to various places in the arsenal.
Kelsey: Do you remember if there
were any cases of what we would refer to as sexual
harassment?
Varga: I knew of none.
Kelsey: Was there a
union?
Varga: I don’t know of any. I
didn’t know of rights, and race discrimination, or
sexual discrimination. That all came later
in my education.
Kelsey: As far as you know, were men
and women paid the same?
Varga: That I’m not sure. You know,
it’s funny thing, people do not share that
information, either. I really don’t know.
Kelsey: It seems from what you said
before that there were jobs that only men did.
There were jobs that both men and
women did, but there were also some jobs that only
men did. Is that correct?
Varga: I think so.
Kelsey: And most of those jobs were
supervisory or managerial?
Varga: Right. At sixteen or
seventeen, I wasn’t assessing that.
Kelsey: Did you make new friends there?
Varga: Yes. And I’d just been cut
off from my old friends—you
know what I mean?
Kelsey: And how was that?
Varga: Well, when you graduate,
people do move. Some did go to school, some went to
work elsewhere. So it’s a time
of change.
Kelsey: So tell me about some of the
friends that you made at
Picatinny.
Varga: Well, I spoke to one this
morning. I had taken her to the last Rosie event
here, and we both worked for the same
checker. So she recently became ill, so I was
calling to inquire. She was hospitalized, so I
called to inquire.
Other people, I was friends with
two…. Let’s see, I’m forgetting her name. Mrs. Little and Gladys were both part
of the previous year’s training, so that’s how
really know that
Picatinny did make an offer to them, to train them,
send them
to school
for the summer. Mine was a shorter course, on the
job.
Kelsey: And you were trained right
there?
Varga: Right there.
Kelsey: They were sent to….
Varga: They were sent to
Dover High School, yeah.
Kelsey: Were the friends that you met at
Picatinny, were they mostly your age?
Varga: Yes, they were recent high
school graduates, yes.
Kelsey: And what kinds of things did
you do together?
Varga: Not too much. (laughs)
Kelsey: Did you see each other
outside of work?
Varga: Very little, yes.
Kelsey: Did they live near you?
Varga: One or two miles or more
away, right, they did. It was very important that I
have a car, as time…. You know, it
sort of took a while.
Kelsey: And did you get a car while you were working at
Picatinny?
Varga: No. No, I saved my money so
I’d have it to learn something else. That happened
later on. I guess I was
nineteen or twenty before I got a car.
Kelsey: So that was two or three
years after the end of the war, before you actually
had a car.
Varga: That’s right.
Kelsey: Describe to me—you talked
about it a little bit—but a little more about what a
day was like, when you would go
to work, and then what did you do?
Varga: Well, you were given
assignments. Probably I was the low man on the
totem pole in my group—you know, with
the least experience. There were gauges that were
used in the field. So you either got an assignment
from your
checker, or knowing that you were going to have to
fill out a report once a week, you got pencil
drawings from
the back file room and you inked them in. That’s
the truth.
Kelsey: And what kind of assignments
did the checkers give you?
Varga: Well, to draw a gauge. I
can’t remember what height of experience I reached,
so I couldn’t describe exactly what
I did all those years ago.
Kelsey: Did you do the drawings
freehand?
Varga: Well, you had a slide rule, a
big ruler, and you had instruments. No, you didn’t
draw them freehand.
Kelsey: What kind of instruments did
you use?
Varga: Well, we were using India
ink, a pen with nibs, where you would draw on the
straight line.
Kelsey: Did you use any other kinds
of tools other than a slide rule and….
Varga: At this point in my life, I
can’t tell you that. (chuckles) That’s buried in
my memory.
Kelsey: About how long did it take
you to draw a single gauge?
Varga: I can’t tell you that,
either. That’s faded in my memory.
Kelsey: Do you think that you would
have done more than one a day?
Varga: I think so.
Kelsey: So the way it worked was
sometimes the checker would have something that he
would give you to do.
Varga: Assign me, yes.
Kelsey: And then if there wasn’t
anything specific that he had….
Varga: [I] found work to do.
Kelsey: Then you would go and find
something….
Varga: To do, so you weren’t just
sitting there.
Kelsey: Was it sometimes difficult
to find work to do?
Varga: No. There was a library of
filings in the back of the room, of drawings.
Kelsey: And then you would take
these drawings and ink them in?
Varga: Yes, because they were done
in pencil.
Kelsey: When you were doing one from
scratch, would you make those drawings in pencil
first?
Varga: You know, I cannot remember.
(laughs) I’m sorry.
Kelsey: That’s okay.
Varga: That was a long time ago.
Kelsey: Yeah, it was, a very long
time. I think you
said that you lived with your family during the war.
Varga: Yes.
Kelsey: And basically the same
people that you lived with while you were growing
up.
Varga: My mother and father.
Kelsey: How did the war change your
activities and routines? You were fourteen when the
war started, so you were in
your first year of high school. So after the war
started, say, in ’42, by the end of 1942, how had
things changed
for you?
Varga: Well, I know especially after
my mother went to work, there
was more money. I think all of
us were poor. It’s
hard to explain to anyone who
hasn’t been there, but what you wore, what you did,
your
shoes, what money you had to do something
else—things were tight before the war. So there was
a little more
money. I think all of us started to prosper a
little.
Kelsey: So then do you feel that you
were actually able to do more things after the war,
because your mother—even
before you yourself went to
work—because your mother was bringing in additional money into the house?
Varga: That’s right, yes.
Kelsey: So what kinds of things did
you do….
Varga: With my extra money?
Kelsey: Uh-huh.
Varga: (chuckles) I suppose I
dressed a little better. What did I do? Had a
little more money to spend. Once a year
we went to
Nova Scotia to see my
other grandmother. Having
more money makes you more confident to do
other things.
Kelsey: Did you do things like go to
the movies more?
Varga: Yes.
Kelsey: And maybe the soda fountain
more?
Varga: Yes.
Kelsey: As the war went on, and you
got a little older, did people you know start to go
into the military?
Varga: Yes.
Kelsey: Or people you went to school
with, maybe were a year or two ahead of you?
Varga: Yes.
Kelsey: And were they mostly the
guys, or did some girls that you knew join the
military?
Varga: No, just the fellows.
Kelsey: Who did you socialize with
in high school?
Varga: I had two girlfriends who lived in Luxemburg Do you know where Luxemburg is? It’s near Route 80 in
Wharton.
Used to be an IGA Store there, and now
there’s a Food Market. Do you know where Washington Pond is? That
section of
Wharton.
Kelsey: So that’s where your friends
lived?
Varga: Yes.
Kelsey: What kind of things did you
all do?
Varga: It’s kind of vague to me
now. Just hung out together.
Kelsey: Were they all girls?
Varga: Yes.
Kelsey: When you started working at
Picatinny, especially after
you graduated from high
school, did they have any kind
of organized social
or recreational activities with the military or the
civilians?
Varga: Not that I know of. There’s
always, I suppose, been an officers' club there, but
no, not for the civilians. It was
serious business, and that’s what it was—business.
Kelsey: Okay, we were talking about
basically life during the war, what it was like.
What did you do when you were by
yourself?
Varga: You mean at home or whatever?
Kelsey: Yeah.
Varga: Well, I liked to read. I
ended up being a spoiled, waited-upon, only child.
I had to help my mother, who was now
working in and outside
the house. I wouldn’t say I lived a very exciting
life, but
shopped, movies, did things,
friends.
Kelsey: Where did you go, to go to
the movies and shopping?
Varga: Well, we went to the movies
at the
Playhouse Theater. There were two theaters
in
Dover, Playhouse and the
Baker Theater. And shopping, we had a railroad pass
because my father worked for the
railroad, so we shopped
in Paterson or
Newark and not in
Dover—for shopping, that’s
clothing shopping.
Kelsey: And what were some of the
stores that were in
Paterson [when
you went there?]?
Varga: Hm. You know I can’t think
of the name of it, but eventually I remember I
bought my wedding dress in
Paterson:
Macy’s, Bamberger’s. There was a
big huge store, Broad and Market Streets in
Newark, and that’s all I can
remember.
Kelsey: Did you ever shop in
Morristown?
Varga: No. I don’t know why. Later
I worked in
Morristown, but no, not
at that time.
Kelsey: Did you ever go to any
social events in
Newark?
Varga: No, I don’t think I did.
Kelsey: Do you remember there being
tea dances?
Varga: I don’t remember those.
Kelsey: Some people have mentioned
that, in
Newark especially, at the
hotels. How did you
feel about the war? What
did you think about? You
were pretty young when it started, but
can you remember what you thought about it,
did it
feel like it was something that was really
personally
impacting you at that point, or was it something
that was more like going on someplace else, and you
had
nothing to do with?
Varga: I think I looked at it with a
child’s eyes, compared to the way I look on it
today. At the end of movies you were
shown graphic films, especially when they discovered
the prison camps—you know, it was revealed.
Kelsey: That was at the end of the
war?
Varga: That was at the end of the
war. So it was just a very horrible thing, and when
we were looking at what I had
saved, I didn’t think of the horror of my working at
a place that produced ammunition that was made to
really kill,
deter others. Since it didn’t happen here,
it was a war you heard about, saw pictures of, read
about, but it’s
nothing like living in an occupied, active war.
Kelsey: That’s actually an
interesting point that you just made about the work
that you were doing, and what was being
produced there.
Varga: Yes, especially with that
booklet I showed you, where it showed actually what
Picatinny Arsenal produced in
armament. I don’t think they
would give everyone one of those booklets today.
(laughs) I mean, it just seems a
little cock sure way to handle
it.
Kelsey: So you and the other people
who were working there, how did you feel, did you
really think about what it was
that you were making?
Varga: As I say, I don’t think….
Each person would have to answer that for
themselves, but if they’re like me, I was
more of a child then. It’s like when they dropped
the bomb over
Hiroshima. Was it
Doolittle’s men? Whoever
flew, it was a big thing, and it was
“Rah! Rah! America!”
Kelsey: That was early in the war.
Varga: Well, it was when we were
trying to have
Japan stop.
Kelsey: Oh, the nuclear bomb, the
atomic bomb.
Varga: Yes. Well, I certainly feel
the horror of it all now, in a way that I didn’t
then. Do you know? We really didn’t
know anything about—we the people—didn’t really
understand the true impact of that
bomb. So you can
look
[at] that life through a child’s eyes, or an adult’s
eyes, or an older person’s eyes. So that’s what I
have to say
about that.
Kelsey: Your parents, who were
older, did they ever talk about the war in a way
that would maybe give a different point of
view?
Varga: Well, I don’t know. My
father had been a soldier
stationed in
Pershing’s
headquarters in France in World War I.
I told you
my husband was a soldier, but I
hadn’t
met him at that time. He went to war after he
graduated from
high school. So I didn’t hear his
views until later
on. But war is hell. I mean, especially if it’s in
your own land,
right? It isn’t like two basketball
teams. You
know what I mean? So what does one know of war
intimately,
until it happens.
Kelsey: Did you have close friends
or family members who
were fighting?
Varga: Yes, I had a cousin in the
war, yes—the
South Pacific.
Kelsey: Was he in the
marines,
navy?
Varga: He was in the
navy, yes. He
was a local
Wharton fellow who just
passed away a few years ago.
Kelsey: Do you remember what battles
he was in?
Varga: No, I don’t. He told us, and
we should have recorded it. I’m not sure that it
was ever recorded.
Kelsey: Were any of your friends or family killed or wounded?
Varga: No.
Kelsey: So they all came home?
Varga: Yes.
Kelsey: Did they behave
differently? Did you notice that when they came
home, whether they acted differently from
what you remembered?
Varga: I don’t think they acted too
differently.
Kelsey: How did you communicate with
people you knew who were away at war?
Varga: Write letters.
Kelsey: So it was all letter
writing?
Varga: Yes.
Kelsey: You mentioned that letters
from your grandmother to
your mother, from
Canada, were
censored.
Varga: One time she must have
mentioned whether a ship was sunk off the coast.
Now, this is an older woman—I’m
saying this—she was older at the time—and she was
censured. You know, I don’t know, they must have
notified
her so that she wouldn’t speak of anything that was
happening off the coast, or internally in
Nova Scotia
Kelsey: So someone actually
contacted her and said she shouldn’t have done that?
Varga: Yes.
Kelsey: Did they black out something
in the letter, or did the letter just never get
delivered?
Varga: No, I don’t remember the
details, but I remember that someone actually sat
and read the letters, and that she
was
censured.
Kelsey: Did you get
“V” mail?
Varga: Yeah.
Kelsey: And what did that look like?
Varga: I really can’t remember now.
Kelsey: It was real small, they
microfilmed it, right?
Varga: Yes.
Kelsey: I’ve seen some of my parents
“V” mail. Did you ever get
letters, can you remember getting
letters where you
could tell that they had
censored
information out of them?
Varga: I don’t remember that.
O’Hagan: What is
“V” mail? Maybe other people might not know,
because I don’t.
Kelsey:
“V” mail was
victory mail. Is that what it stood for? And
they would take a letter and they
would microfilm it, so that it was reduced in size,
so a regular sheet of paper would be reduced to like
a quarter
of that size. And then that’s what would actually
get mailed. And I guess it was to conserve paper.
Was that
the reason for it?
Varga: Or to indicate that it was
censored. It really was, right?
Kelsey: Yeah, that somebody else had
actually opened it and read it.
Did you have
a
victory garden?
Varga: Well, we didn’t think of it
as a
victory garden, but my
parents always gardened: string
beans, carrots, tomatoes,
potatoes, scallions,
peaches. My grandmother had a huge apple orchard. But
I mean, these were things that
they always did—they
didn’t do it because there was a war on.
Kelsey: Were there any
conservation
measures or
recycling
that you did, that was totally because of the war, that you
hadn’t done before?
Varga: Well, first of all, there was
no garbage collection. So there wasn’t
recycling,
to my knowledge. What did we do
with our newspapers? Perhaps burned them, because
you could still burn—and your garbage. My father would
go out and dig a hole. He
had considerable property, so he buried cans.
That’s all I
remember.
Kelsey: What about things like
rubber products?
Varga: Well, maybe we’d put those
where there was a collection for certain things: aluminum and rubber and other
scarce items that could be used.
Kelsey: So that you saved things for
those collections. And had you done that before the
war started?
Varga: I don’t know. And I wasn’t
the woman of the house, and that wasn’t my job, so I
don’t remember. I’m passing on
that. Now today we conserve, we recycle, we mulch.
Kelsey: Did you ever worry, or were
there people around you that worried that the
Allies
might not win the war?
Varga: Perhaps my father, who read widely, did. I did not. I did not
worry. I was naïve.
Kelsey: So you just figured
everything would turn out okay.
Varga: I didn’t look at it
fatalistically, as if we were going to lose.
Kelsey: But your father did?
Varga: I’d say he may have, because
he was a man who’d been in war, and he was more
widely read than I, deeper
thinker.
Kelsey: At the end of the war, you
mentioned seeing in the newsreels about the
concentration camps. How did you—
and you were older
then—how did you feel when you saw those?
Varga: I thought it was
unbelievable. Last summer we went to
Auschwitz
just beyond belief. You know, when you read
the
stories, or hear the stories…. And there are people
around who do tell the stories locally.
Kelsey: Do you remember if you had
any idea while the war was going on, that these
kinds of things were happening?
Varga: No way.
Kelsey: Were there any refugees that
you came into contact with—not necessarily Jewish
people, but any refugees
from
Europe that might have come to this area?
Varga: No, I had no idea.
Kelsey: What did patriotism mean to you?
Varga: Probably saluting the flag,
going to war if you were called, voting. That’s
probably it.
Kelsey: And that’s what it meant to
you then.
Varga: Yeah.
Kelsey: And how did you show your
patriotism?
Varga: Well, I didn’t go to war, I
saluted the flag, I voted, I paid my taxes, I didn’t
cause myself to be arrested, I obeyed
laws.
Kelsey: Did you feel that going to
work at
Picatinny was a way
of showing patriotism?
Varga: At the time, probably not. I
wasn’t an adult, thinking that deeply.
Kelsey: Actually, that’s
interesting. If you had been given the choice of
two jobs, one at
Picatinny and one in an office
that paid basically
the same amount of money at that time, which one do
you think you would have picked?
Varga: Well, it was convenient when
I was in high school to have a part-time job. I had
the time, and I could use the
money. And I didn’t know what the arsenal consisted
of until I got there. You just don’t walk in the
arsenal. It
would have been interesting to make a decision on
that, but it didn’t happen. (chuckles)
Kelsey: And you said you didn’t
really know what was going on in there until you
actually went in.
Varga: It’s a little city, or a
medium-sized city.
Kelsey: When you went in and started
working, what did you think about it?
Varga: Initially we were handled by
a military officer. This man demanded that we say
“sir,” and I had never said “sir” to
anyone in my entire life. And everyone had to say
“sir” on every sentence we spoke. The medical exam,
taking
my blood was like an experiment to find a vein. I
mean, I still remember it to this day. That was
sort of a rude
way to start your first job. But we all handled
it. I was amazed at how big the arsenal was, the
vast numbers of
people there. Then they brought in people from, I
don’t know,
Haiti, I believe, at the one end of the
block of buildings I was in. They brought people in
from every backwoods farm—they were on my bus —people
who hadn’t worked,
people from
Pennsylvania.
There were a lot of people there. This wasn’t…. Like today we
have many people from many countries, many stages of
life, income, from many countries, speaking many
languages. So it’s a different world. In my town
of
Wharton, I don’t know if there was one black
person. They
had a lot of Hungarians. At that time
I didn’t know I would marry a Hungarian (chuckles) and go to see
Hungary,
too. So life was different. My excursions
took me to my grandmother in
Canada, so we lived a very simple narrow
life.
Kelsey: They brought in all of these
people….
Varga: From different places to work
in the arsenal.
Kelsey: Did you say
Haiti?
Varga: I think they were from
Haiti.
Kelsey: The island of
Haiti?
Varga: I think so.
Kelsey: And then they brought people
in from farms all over Northern New Jersey….
Varga: And
Pennsylvania.
Kelsey:
Eastern Pennsylvania.
Varga:
New York City.
Kelsey: And
New York City. Now, did these people stay here, or
did they go back and forth?
Varga: Well, certainly the ones on
the farm from Northwest New Jersey, went back home.
Kelsey: Every day?
Varga: Yes, because my bus was bringing them in and taking them home. I’m
really not sure
where they all lived. I’m sure some of them must
have commuted, because the area wasn’t….
Victory Gardens may have been built to house government workers, but
not to the extent that
Picatinny needed.
It’s a good question, I don’t know.
Kelsey: Do you remember…. You said
that the population was not as diverse at all, as it
is now, and that you don’t
even recall even one black in
Wharton. But these people that they were bringing in from
all these
different places….
Varga: Was a mixture.
Kelsey: Was that group more diverse?
Varga: Yeah.
Kelsey: Were there blacks in that
group?
Varga: I think. But my memory back
that far probably was very self-centered: I saw
what concerned me, and I wasn’t
intimidated by all these people, just the sheer
numbers. I wasn’t used to walking with so many
people around. It
was like a city—especially going in and coming out.
I mean, big turnover.
Kelsey: Going in and out of the
gate?
Varga: Yes. Yeah, going to your
bus.
Kelsey: I guess they had shift work,
right?
Varga: They must have. But my
mother and I worked regular
hours, but I do not know the answers
to shift [work]. One
would think that they worked
three shifts, but I’m not sure.
Kelsey: But you never worked
anything other than the day shift?
Varga: Yeah, I had the day shift,
right.
Kelsey: Everyone who was hired, even
part-time, had to have a physical?
Varga: Their physical, yeah. It
wasn’t a thorough physical. And everyone passed.
Yes, everyone passed, do you
understand? I mean, it’s only after you’ve gone
through this, because…. Well, I certainly went to a
doctor, but I
never had the experience I had there that day with
the nurse. And I had never gone through an
interview before,
especially with a military man. So perhaps he’s
still talking about his experiences, I don’t
know.
Kelsey: So tell me a little bit more
about that interview.
Varga: Well, it was just like a rude
awakening. Innocently I was passing by, never
having been treated that way, and
that was his manner.
Kelsey: How did he treat you?
Varga: Well, he was very demanding.
I had not met anyone like him before. And then we
all passed. I mean, I think
that’s funny.
Kelsey: Do you remember what kind of
questions he asked?
Varga: No.
Kelsey: Or did he just tell
you things?
Varga: His manner was very
demanding. My school and family life
had not prepared me for that man. So
maybe that’s part of the awakening, right? Life’s
not all like your mother's and
your teachers’ lives.
Kelsey: When you went to the
physical, were you lined up like you see the
pictures of the guys going [unclear]?
Varga: Having inoculations?
Kelsey: Yeah.
Varga: Well, we weren’t having any
inoculations. I can’t really tell you that, I don’t
know. It’s faded in my mind.
Kelsey: They took your blood
pressure?
Varga: I don’t think they took your
blood pressure—they took your blood. That’s why I
was—they were probing, I was
very thin at that time, from walking to and from
school.
Kelsey: How many miles was that?
Varga: It’s only two a day, but if I
could only walk two miles a day, I’d be a much
thinner person. (chuckles)
Kelsey: What was your most memorable
experience at
Picatinny?
Varga: Hm. I think there wasn’t any
highlight or low bad experience. I entered my first
work experience of my life for
which I got paid. And the discipline, especially
when school was over and now I’m working eight hours
a day,
every day. It was just a smooth time. And the war
came, and I think I took a month off, maybe two
months, and
then I went to secretarial school in the fall.
Kelsey: This was after the war?
Varga: After the war.
Kelsey: Do you remember anything
particularly funny or humorous that happened while
you were working at
Picatinny?
Varga: I really don’t.
Kelsey: How did you feel when the
war ended?
Varga: Well, we were all happy.
That’s what we had…. I mean, I wasn’t planning to
stay there for my life. We were
happy the war was over, and I accepted that my job
was over, and that I’d move on.
Kelsey: Was it understood before the
war ended that at whatever point it did end, your
job would be over? Was that
expressly stated?
Varga: I don’t remember it being
stated, but I accepted it. I must have understood
it, because I accepted it with ease.
Some people I know were called back. And I’m happy
that I wasn’t. How’s that?
Kelsey: And why were you happy that
you weren’t?
Varga: Because I went on to other
things. I mean, I live in a community where I’m
surrounded by
Picatinny employees
and retirees. My
husband was quite shocked when
everyone retired at fifty-five from
Picatinny, and he worked ’til
sixty-four. Different
rules to different games.
Kelsey: Where were you on
V-E Day?
Varga: I can remember being at my
grandmother's, that’s the
only thing that sticks in my
mind, and she gave me
something because it was the
end of the war—some little thing she picked up from
around the house. That’s all I
remember.
Varga: And what about
V-J Day?
Varga: I don’t remember where I was
then.
O’Hagan: Was it the grandmother from
Nova Scotia?
Varga: No. My [paternal]
grandmother lived on the
same street I did, two doors away. So I used to go see her every
day.
Kelsey: Once you had been laid off,
or your job at
Picatinny had been terminated, then
you said you took a couple
months off.
Varga: Yes.
Kelsey: And what did you do?
Varga: I took a trip to
Nova Scotia I enrolled in school and started
in September.
Kelsey: September of….
Varga: What would it be, ’45,
right? The
war with Japan ended in ’45,
correct?
Kelsey: Yeah. What school did you
enroll in?
Varga: I went to Summit Secretarial School.
Kelsey: And that was in
Summit?
Varga: Right.
Kelsey: And how long were you in
school?
Varga: Probably nine months. Then I
went to work in
Madison for the
principal of the high school.
Kelsey: At Madison High School?
Varga: Yeah.
Kelsey: How did you feel about your
job as a secretary, versus the jobs that you had
done at
Picatinny?
Varga: Well, I liked it better. But
now I was an experienced person, having worked. I
mean, don’t you form your
opinions as you go along?
Kelsey: Were you paid the same,
better, worse?
Varga: I was paid better.
Kelsey: Than what you had been
making at
Picatinny?
Varga: Right. And strangely enough,
when I married, I made more than my husband. When he
came out of service, he
went to
Parks College, which
was a part of
St. Louis University, and he was an
aeronautical engineer. And in
’49, there were no
jobs for aeronautical engineers, so he had a hard
time getting a
job. He was the first college
graduate in his
family. He eventually became a
mechanical engineer,
got his master’s.
Kelsey: Where did you meet him?
Varga: I met him at
Egbert’s, square dancing. Did you ever hear of
Egbert’s?
Kelsey: No, don’t think so. Where
was that?
Varga: Well, it’s somewhere outside
of Denville. It’s on a lake, and it
was called
Egbert’s.
Kelsey: And he had moved to
New
Jersey from
St. Louis?
Varga: No, his parents lived in
Dover, and he went to school in
St.Louis.
Kelsey: So he was originally from
this area?
Varga: Yeah.
Kelsey: You just had never
encountered each other.
Varga: Right.
Kelsey: Getting back to your job,
did you feel that you had more responsibility?
Varga: You mean as a secretary?
Kelsey: Uh-huh.
Varga: I worked for a very unusual
man. There were two secretaries, and I was really a
year older than, say,
high school seniors. It was nice, I liked it.
Kelsey: And how long did you stay
there?
Varga: I stayed there seven years
and eight months. And by then my husband had his master’s
degree, and I was
pregnant with my first son.
Kelsey: And that’s when you quit?
Varga: That’s when I quit.
Kelsey: And at any time after you
left
Picatinny, did you
ever consider not finding another job?
Varga: In those days, the man
worked. We all lived on one salary, and you made
do, and the mothers stayed home
with the children. There were some exceptions, but
basically that’s how it was.
Kelsey: But before you were married,
when you left
Picatinny and
then [unclear], did it ever
occur to you at that point
that you wouldn’t
be retraining or looking for another job?
Varga: It never occurred to me, no.
I knew I’d work somewhere. It’s just that I really
didn’t have any skills, except
typing, drafting. I wasn’t going to save the world
with my drafting. I knew that. So I had to move
on.
Kelsey: Was it because you did have
typing skills that’s why you focused on going to
secretarial school?
Varga: Well now that I’ve had time
to think about this through the years, there was no
guidance when we were in
school. I did well in school. I wasn’t guided to
scholarships or how I could do it. That’s why I
really enjoy
working with the scholarship committee. I’ve done it about
thirteen years, so I know what I’m doing, and I’m
giving the assist that
I wish I had been given. I try to keep up
with changes and opportunities. So some people
did learn how
they could do it, and they did go to school
or college from
Wharton—but I wasn’t one of those
people.
Kelsey: But being a secretary was
something that you knew that you could do, it was a
job, an avenue that was open to
you.
Varga: That’s an avenue I tried,
yeah.
Kelsey: And ended up liking it.
Varga: Right.
Kelsey: Better than being a
draftsman.
Varga: Right.
Kelsey: What year did you meet your
husband?
Varga: In 1949.
Kelsey: So you’d been working for a
couple of years then at that time.
Varga: Uh-huh.
Kelsey: And when did you get
married?
Varga: In 1951.
Kelsey: And then you had your first
child….
Varga: In ’54.
Kelsey: And how many children do you
have?
Varga: Three.
Kelsey: Through all we’ve talked
about, we’ve talked about how when you were growing
up you felt you were poor, you
had very little, you really had to make do, and you
all needed to work.
Varga: Go without, yes.
Kelsey: And go without.
Varga: But we weren’t alone—a lot of
people were doing that.
Kelsey: With your family and your three children, how did your experience
growing up make you feel about
their growing up?
Varga: Well, I think my generation
of women at that time were staying home and using
their skills, stretching the dollar,
learning how to sew, making it all work, staying
home with the children. I went back to work when my
daughter
was, I don’t know, about eight
years old. She had to be fifteen minutes home
alone. And I took a job in Dover
High School,
part-time. And I liked it, I liked working. It was
a good
experience, especially now I’d had a little
experience and I had motherhood, and it was good to
get back to work.
Kelsey: Did the economic
insecurities that you had when you were growing
up—did you feel insecure with your
children? Were you worried that there might not be
enough for them, the way there wasn’t enough for
you?
Varga: No. We started saving before
we had children, for the children and their
education. A good man, he was a
financial planner, and the skills, we both knew how
to save, go without. “Good enough will do” is the
motto you
grew up with. So would I do it differently? I
think I’d be a different mother if I had another chance, but it’s not
gonna happen.
Kelsey: So the skills that you had
to learn growing up during the
Depression, you used those skills to
make things better for your own family.
Varga: Right. There’s nothing like
living through it and going through it, to learn how
to do it. Sometimes you wonder if
the current generation, how they will do. You know,
when you meet adversity, if you don’t have those
skills, it’s
going to be very hard.
Kelsey: So do you think that the war
changed your life and the lives of your family and friends more than the
Depression
did, or
less?
Varga: Well, certainly all the men
who went to war and took advantage of the
G.I. Bill
had their lives
changed and improved. War did bring better
things to them if they survived to be able to go
through and go to
school. I guess going through the
Depression was something like a war for some
people. My father always had
a job, my
husband's father did not
always have a job. So I only know how it worked for me, and
different people
take different approaches. You
must know that, with your friends.
Kelsey: So for you personally, do
you think the war changed your life?
Varga: I think it did, yes.
Kelsey: And how did it change it?
Varga: How did it change it? Well,
we’ll never know if there were no war, what I would
have done differently. Certainly,
as I told you, the war gave us more money to do more
things with, to have more opportunities. And as I
worked,
maybe I became a different person.
Kelsey: In what way?
Varga: Well, I was taught to be meek
and mild and to keep my opinions to myself, be seen
and not heard. And I’m
more aggressive (laughs) than you can imagine. I
mean, I have changed, so that’s my experience.
Kelsey: And do you think that was a
good thing for you?
Varga: Definitely, yes.
Kelsey: You mentioned the
G.I. Bill. Did your husband take advantage of the
G.I. Bill?
Varga: Yes.
Kelsey: Do you think that the
education that he was able to get made a difference
in the economic situation of your
family?
Varga: Yeah.
Kelsey: So when you said that was a
positive result of the war, that was what you meant?
Varga: Yeah.
Kelsey: After the war, when you went
to secretarial school, and then you went to work at
Madison High School, where
were you living? Did you continue to
live with your parents?
Varga: When we married, my husband’s parents moved to
Somerville, and we moved into their house two weeks later.
Kelsey: Their house in
Dover?
Varga:
Dover. And then
we lived there for twelve years. We had a five-year
plan. We were going to have a
new house in five years. And in twelve years, I
wasn’t getting itchy, and I still was at home. And
by then, by
twelve years, we had three children. Is that
right? Ginny was born in 1964.
No, Ginny came
after we moved.
So there was a development on the
top of our hill, and we bought one of those houses.
By the
time we bought it,
we owned a house—we were buying
the new house—a lot, and we had the other
house. So
we had too much
going on, financially, at one time.
Kelsey: You had how many houses—two
houses and a lot?
Varga: I guess we had bought the
house on Prospect Street. Then we bought the [lot]
we were going to build our dream
house on. In the meantime, this development opened,
and so we bought a house in the development. But it
all
worked out, and we got rid of that one house and
lot, and we have our house that we live in.
Kelsey: Did you live with your
parents until you got married?
Varga: Yes.
Kelsey: So you commuted from
Wharton
to
Madison on the train?
Varga: Yes. Well, once I got a car, I drove, so I drove.
Kelsey: How long did it take you to
save for a car, or to get a
car?
Varga: Well, I had to go through
school, and then I worked about three years.
Kelsey: So by the late forties….
Varga: Yes, I bought the car.
Kelsey: What kind of a car?
Varga: It was a Chevy, it was very
nice. Your first car is
very important.
Kelsey: Yes, it is, I remember.
Did the work
that you did during the war change your feelings
about what kind of work women should or
could do, and what women could do outside the home?
Varga: I think when I really came to
be very pro-woman was here in the
County College of Morris. When I came here, I
had some friends who were having hard times, and this was
mecca for women who were having hard times. They
could use the daycare center, they could go to
school here, tap into the grants, console each other. It was
just
teeming with women like that. And I became
very pro-woman.
Kelsey: And when was that?
Varga: Well, I came here, let’s
see…. I came here about 1973, part-time. But when
did I work here? Yeah. So I must
have come here to work. First I worked as a temp
here, then I worked for Humanities, and I worked here from
about ’73-’74 to
1978. And I went to school, so I talked to a lot of
these women on the job and at night. It was
very
interesting. You must have some of this
experience—had great conversations.
Kelsey: You mentioned daycare as a
real positive [unclear].
Varga: It was a great thing, yeah.
Kelsey: Do you remember—of course
you wouldn’t have had any need for it—when you were
at
Picatinny, do you
remember if there were
any kind of arrangements for women who were working
and had children?
Varga: For daycare? No, I don’t
remember. Well, I don’t remember if, in 1944, if
the average woman who had a child
had a car, either. You
know? In other words, you weren’t seeing people on
the bus with children in their arms. I
don’t know that, really
don’t.
Kelsey: Yeah, you’re right, at that
point in time, not that many people had cars—it was
the gasoline and the tires and all
that.
Varga: They may have had a sitter at
their home.
Kelsey: But you don’t recall, all of
these people that were coming into
Picatinny, and most of
them were coming on
some sort of transportation that
was being provided, or public transportation, but
you don’t
recall seeing any
small children?
Varga: No. And see, if
they could bring in buses, they could cut down on
all the cars that were coming in. But I wasn’t
thinking of all that when I
was that age.
Kelsey: Is there one thought about
your wartime experience that you would want to share
with future generations?
Varga: That’s quite a question.
(pause) I guess you can look back at a time when
all this happened to you. I would
think that you have a collection of experiences, and
maybe your deeper thoughts come about the whole
thing
later. I don’t have a thought for future
generations, except avoid war, if there were ever to
be a perfect world—I’m
not sure there will ever be.
Kelsey: Is there anything else you’d
like to add?
Varga: No, that’s it, thank you.
Kelsey: Thank you very much.
Varga: You’re welcome.
[END OF INTERVIEW]
INDEX
