ROY AND MAXINE RAMEY

The medical people at Sacred Heart Hospital in Spokane didn't expect Roy Ramey to survive.  His mother had been stricken by the deadly flu that devastated populations all over the earth during World War I.  She was hospitalized for weeks before Roy was born in 1919.  Maxine, born about the same time as Roy, entered life into a similar situation in the town of Nez Perce.  The town there had turned an old theater into a hospital to treat the many, many people affected by the influenza epidemic. 

One of Maxine's aunts, a nurse, came out from the east to care for those who had fallen to the flu, young men being among the most vulnerable to its attack.  Maxine remembers hearing about how the healthy ones left in town would carry flu victims out of the make-shift hospital and bury them at night to try to keep panic from running through the town.  She also recalls hearing that the town of Craigmont, just fourteen miles away, was hardly hit by the deadly virus at all.

Maxine and Roy, hearty survivors from early on, met at the University of Idaho, where they both graduated with teaching degrees in 1940 at what turned out to be the end of the Great Depression.  They faced one of the worst job markets ever.  Maxine got a job at the high school in Lapwai, Idaho teaching English to all of the one hundred and fifty students and also teaching Spanish and Public Speaking as well as coaching the plays at the high school.  She started in the fall of 1940 teaching all those classes for the handsome sum of $1,080 per year. 

Roy, unable to locate a teaching job, went to work for the Northern Pacific Railroad as an agent-telegrapher, a skill he had learned from his father.  This was before people worked a forty hour week with vacation, sick pay, and other benefits.  He started out on the Extra Board as there were no regularly assigned jobs available in the midst of the Depression.  Extra Board meant he substituted for people who could not work that particular day.  Since money was so scarce, people were very reluctant to forego a day's work except for illness or a death in the family.  Roy usually got jobs for only one or two days at a time.  He earned sixty-five cents per hour only for the hours he actually worked, although he traveled over an area stretching from Toppenish, Washington to Paradise, Montana.  He received no allowance for room or board, or any expenses, although he did get free travel on the trains.

On one assignment he left his home in Kendrick, Idaho at four p.m. on a Monday, rode the train to Toppenish via Spokane, worked his eight hour assigned job, and then was bumped by a person with more seniority.  He slept that day in a city park at Toppenish then rode a train home, arriving a two a.m. on Wednesday.  For that eight hours work, plus all the time he spent traveling, he earned five dollars.  Clearly, things were really tough working on the Extra Board.  He was gone so much there was no thought of marriage until he could get a regularly assigned job. 

Finally that happened in the fall of 1941.  Roy and Maxine were married in early November that year, just a few weeks before Pearl Harbor.  When they married, Maxine lost her teaching job, since the rule that had prevailed during the Depression was still in effect.  That rule said a family could not hold two jobs, since so many men with families were unemployed.  The young couple's first home was in an outfit car at Odair, Washington. 

Odair was a large railroad siding about a mile out of Coulee City, Washington.  It was there that all carloads of freight going into the construction site at Grand Coulee Dam were interchanged from the Northern Pacific to the Government Railroad.

The war effort was just beginning to pick up after Pearl Harbor.  There were many fears about what Japan and Germany might do, so the Air Raid Program was started all over the United States.  Air Raid Wardens volunteered to watch the skies for airplanes.  They were given a number to call should they spot any suspicious aircraft.  They were to report a description of the plane and state the direction it was seen to be flying.  Due to the expectation that Japan would attack the West Coast, towns all over Washington had Air Raid Wardens to watch the skies and also keep an eye on homes to make certain they had their blackout shades pulled at night to prevent artificial light from shining out, light which might provide a target for enemy planes.

Since Grand Coulee Dam was considered a high risk for enemy attack, the siding of Odair represented more importance than its population might indicate.  At the time Roy and Maxine lived there, there were only four people in the community, a total of four, Roy and Maxine and two other people.  Roy Ramey stepped up and volunteered to serve as Air Raid Warden in Odair.

"We kept good watch on the sky," smiled Roy.  "Nothing got by us!" 

"There were usually one or two planes a day," added Maxine, who, as in all their sixty years of life together, was right there with Roy, watching the skies of Central Washington.

Maxine and Roy both recall the days of rationing that characterized World War II days on the home front.  They explained how they got a gas card to fill the tank of their Chevy Coupe.  When the card was used up, they could buy no more gas.  Nationwide speeds were reduced to forty-five miles per hour, even thirty-five miles per hour in some places, to save gas and tires.  Nylon hose were hard to find, a problem for women who had to dress up for work.  But, you could get a tooth pulled for four dollars.

"The whole nation came together with war bond sales, volunteer programs on the home front, and a concerted effort to stand behind our people in the military," Maxine recalls.

As the war progressed, Roy was transfered to Pullman where telegraph operators worked around the clock keeping all the railroads running, moving goods and troops from all over the country.  Cadets for the Air Force came in on trains for Pre-flight Training on what is now the WSU campus, eight to ten rail carloads arriving periodically.

Roy had been rejected by the military because he only has hearing in one ear as a result of a mastoid operation when he was an infant.  However, his job was considered vital to the war effort, so he was frozen on the job for the duration of the war, as were all railroad employees.  His work assignment during those years was nine hours a day, Monday through Saturday and eight hours on Sunday, all on straight time.  He worked that schedule for nearly six years without a day off.

After the war Roy and Maxine Ramey moved to Rosalia where they raised their two girls.  Roy continued to work as an agent-telegrapher until he retired and Maxine taught school for many years.  Roy still enjoys getting out his battery driven telegraphy machine to demonstrate the sound of Morse Code.  He and a few other retired telegraphers in the area like doing demonstrations for school kids.

"There are no young ones learning the trade," Roy says, a little sadly.  "It is too hard to learn and has no practical value in modern times.  But in the old days it was considered an art.  A good telegrapher could recognize another telegrapher almost immediately.  Each one had a style as distinctive as a voice."  Roy went on to speak fondly of the role railroads, train depots, and the telegraph had in communications and transportation during the war and the social place the rail system had in small towns, how it brought people together.  Dots and dashes bring back good memories to the Air Raid Warden of Odair and his college sweetheart, Maxine.