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Introduction to Fannie McClendon 0:20 My name is Fannie McClendon. Early Life and Family Background 0:34 I’ve enjoyed life. 0:36 I wish I could tell it better than I do, but there are so many things that happened to me while I was in the service. 0:45 A lot of people I got to know... 0:49 So when they said she was going to interview me, I said, “My God, I’m going to have to try to remember all this.” 1:20 Most of the people here call me Fannie, which is my real name, but most of the service people call me Fran. 1:30 Lafayette, Louisiana — that’s where I was born in 1920. 1:37 I never knew my father. 1:38 He was dead before I was just a little kid. 1:44 I remember being at his funeral when I was five years old. 1:48 That’s the closest I ever got to my father. 1:52 I was very close to my grandfather and grandmother. 1:56 My grandfather was... 1:59 Whenever I got into trouble, that’s who I would go to. 2:02 We’d get in the buggy and leave until the women cooled down, and then we’d come back. 2:09 We’d come back later on. 2:12 After my father passed, Mama moved us to New York where she could get work. 2:19 We lived wherever Mama could get a job, and she mostly worked in nursing homes and places like that. Impact of Pearl Harbor and Military Service 2:27 At the time, she was at Bellevue Hospital in New York. 2:33 She was a live-in nurse. 2:36 We couldn’t live there too, so we lived at a convent school. 2:40 That’s where we were most of the time — either the convent school there or a convent school in New Jersey, or wherever she was working. 2:53 We lived in Harlem for a while. 3:04 We did go to the Apollo Theater. 3:07 But I wasn’t really going to see the people performing there. 3:13 That was the first time I got to see Cab Calloway. 3:18 We’d go to see whoever was popular at the time. 3:22 Most of them are dead now. 3:27 We moved to Camden, New Jersey, and that’s where I started high school. 3:32 We lived in the YWCA. 3:36 I graduated from high school — the year, I can’t always remember. 3:44 But I remember Pearl Harbor. 3:56 December 7, 1941 — a date which will live in infamy. 4:06 People were upset about what was happening. 4:09 All I knew was what the newspapers said and what people talked about. 4:17 They were talking about people going into the service, especially young women. 4:26 My mother was not very happy when I decided to go down to Fifth Avenue and take the test to join the Army. 4:35 There were about seven Black women. 4:38 One was a doctor, one a nurse. 4:43 They told us all seven of the Black women had failed. 4:51 We didn’t know what to do. 4:52 One of the people there said, “We’ll wait. We’ll call you and let you know.” 4:58 There was one woman who lived up in Harlem and worked for Mrs. Roosevelt. 5:04 She told her what had happened. 5:07 Then they called and said everything was all right. 5:10 We were going to go on to Du Bois and be enrolled in the service. 5:15 At first, we thought we’d all failed. 5:18 We found out that wasn’t true. 5:20 My mom began to accept it after a while that I was in the service. 5:26 She was happy with me being in the service. 5:30 I was sworn in. Training and Experiences in the Army 5:34 I studied on Whitehall Street, I remember. 5:37 But we had most of our training in Des Moines. 5:43 There were quite a few things that happened that we weren’t used to in New York. 5:50 We couldn’t go to the BX. 5:52 We had to make a list of what we needed, and one person would get it for us. 5:57 There were lots of rules. 6:01 There were some people from the North who had never been around people from other parts of the country, especially Black people. 6:11 There were mixtures that had not mixed before. 6:15 I remember one woman we disliked because she was a teacher and was very upset about being put with us. 6:25 So they sent her to OCS to satisfy her. 6:29 We were all very angry about that, just because she didn’t like being with us. 6:36 “They’re white folks, let them be white folks.” 6:40 Funny things like that happen. 6:44 After basic training, they sent me to officer candidate school. 6:51 Then they sent us off to the war in England. 6:59 They put us girls in charge of fixing the mail system. 7:04 I became an officer. 7:05 The offices had rented houses for the officers to live in, but the girls all lived in an old, broken-down school building. 7:16 They got that fixed up and started working on all the mail. 7:24 They had to do something. 7:26 There was an awful lot of mail. 7:29 The English had been taking care of the mail at the stations, but they had done a very bad job. 7:35 So that’s what the girls had to clean up and get out. 7:41 The girls did an excellent job because they didn’t have much to go on. 7:48 They came in all intense. 7:51 Sometimes you look at the pictures and see a lot of people working to get the mail out. 8:01 If they couldn’t find a name, or if they found a name but couldn’t find an envelope, they made things up. 8:07 There was a list of things like: if you found this, your grandmother might have sent cookies, but you got cake instead. 8:18 And it satisfied a lot of people. 8:22 For fun, we would take the train into London. 8:26 I got to see the prime minister. 8:30 We almost got to see the Queen, but they dragged us out somewhere else. 8:36 When we were in London, we tried to see whatever sights we heard about or wanted to see. Life During and After the War 8:48 I learned to play golf while I was in England. 8:53 They had golf clubs there. 8:56 When I talk about places I’ve been, many people here today say, “Well, when did you work?” 9:08 We went when we had time off. 9:09 We did have some time off. 9:14 When we moved to France, we had a lot of German prisoners who did a lot of the work we didn’t do. 9:22 Sometimes it was funny because they hired some French women who worked. 9:29 But the German prisoners made them wash up before they went into the dining room. 9:35 There are lots of little details. Reflections on a Life Well-Lived 9:39 On Sunday afternoon or Sunday morning, during church time... 9:44 They’d all get together, and our troops would invite us over for meals, dancing, or whatever. 9:55 One Sunday, three of the girls went off with a couple of guys and were killed in an accident. 10:05 Unfortunately, I was in command. I was in charge of all the girls there. 10:12 I had to go identify two of the girls because they did not have their dog tags on. 10:23 They were laid out in one of the tents. 10:29 And this was long before any of you guys were born. 10:40 General Eisenhower informs me that the forces of Germany have surrendered to the United Nations. 10:47 The day the war ended, we had the day off and got down to the Riviera. 10:55 I thought I heard it, but I wasn’t sure. 10:59 The radio said something about the war being over in Germany. 11:04 So I told the girls, and one said, “Well, how does she know that?” 11:09 “It’s all in French.” 11:10 Another one said, “She comes from New Orleans and speaks Patois.” 11:17 And that’s how she got to know him. 11:19 That night I called my boss, and she said yes — the war was over in Germany and we were going home. 11:34 The parade and everything was so nice down the street. 11:44 I learned to fix things while I was in England and in different countries, and that’s why I became an antique dealer. 11:54 The dishes in here come from England. 12:00 There are so many things that happened in the years I was in the service. 12:08 Wars, marriages, deaths — all that sort of thing. 12:14 It’s kind of hard. 12:18 It’s been quite a life. 12:22 My name is Fannie McClendon, and you’re watching Stories of Success. 12:27 Perfect. 12:29 I love it. 12:31 Well, you guys are real nice, but I don’t know how you’re going to get my broom back.