Winnifred Elwood

By Claire Kohler

I enter our English room for first period with feelings of trepidation and apprehension.  Today we are supposed to interview someone who has survived the Depression and World War II, someone who had an active part, however big or small, in helping with the war.  We have been assigned partners to interview, and we have discussed the correct way to interview someone without making them feel like a "bug under glass," with every aspect of their lives being poked and prodded and examined in minute detail.  We have been advised to "learn about the person, not just study them," but the difference is completely beyond me.  All I am aware of right now is the fact that I have to interview a seventy or eighty year old woman without any knowledge or experience of how to do it.

I enter the classroom and look around. There are about fifteen elderly people sitting in our seats, looking almost as nervous and apprehensive as we do, talking in subdued voices while they study us.  In a few minutes, we are all paired off and told to go down to the cafeteria where the acoustics are better and there is more breathing space.

The lady I am going to interview is named Winnifred Elwood.  She is short, with gray hair and big green eyes peering out from behind her glasses.  I like her immediately, and this feeling of goodwill makes the interview infinitely easier.  She speaks softly and shyly and stops to consider the question I¹ve asked her before answering.  After we pick a table and get settled, I cautiously start with the basics, not sure how my questioning will be received.  I am lucky, however, to be paired with a person who is easy to talk to and willing to tell me about herself without holding anything back.  As we get to know each other, the questions flow more freely and it becomes more of a conversation than an interview.

Winnifred Elwood was born in Northport, Washington in 1919.  She grew up in Creston, a little town about sixty miles west of Spokane, Washington, where she attended a K-12 schoolhouse.  Win, as she prefers to be called, is the third of six kids; she has two older brothers, two younger brothers and a younger sister.  She graduated in 1936 with the twenty others in her class, the biggest class on record to attend that schoolhouse.  After graduating, she worked on farms and did odd jobs while she saved up the money to go to college, but as her brothers were drafted and sent off to fight in the war, she felt she had to contribute to the war effort, too.  In the fall of ¹41, she started trade school for the army.

The trade school where Win went for three months was located in Eugene, Oregon.  She learned about planes and how to repair them, and in 1942 she was sent to Spokane Army Air Depot at Galena, which is now Spokane International Airport, to repair bomber planes with a group of other girls and a few young boys who were too young to enroll in the army.  There were many different levels of repair for the planes; all were highly specialized and required very exacting knowledge of the plane.  Win worked at Galena for two-and-a-half to three years installing superchargers.  Turbo-Superchargers are heavy, circular pieces of machinery that blow air into the cylinders of the engine.  To install the supercharger regulators, the women had to slide into the wing of the plane on their stomachs and screw the piece into position.  It was hard, greasy, dirty work, yet when I ask if she had fun I get an emphatic "Yes!"

As she is remembering these years, Win¹s eyes are turned inward, and I can tell she is more focused on her memories than on me.  The day shift and the night shift were alternated every month.  As she recalls the hard times on graveyard shift she gazes at me seriously with her big green eyes and then she suddenly smiles up at me shyly as she remembers the parties and fun times she had.  Win was a part of the United Service Organization, or USO, a social club that provided the G.I.s somewhere to go for recreation.  She attended dances, potlucks, and skating parties, and she went to the hospital to socialize with the soldiers there.

In 1944, after she was done repairing planes, Win attended Eastern where she took a junior college prep course.  She admits she was really interested in Botany, but in the 1940¹s there were only a few areas in which women could major, and Botany was not one of the options at Eastern, so she chose Education instead.  In 1946, she transferred to WSC in Pullman where she was able to get a degree in Botany.  She met Lewis Elwood in German class at WSU, and they got married in 1947.

Today Win lives in Albion with Lewis.  They have five children and six grandchildren, ranging in age from junior high school to twenty-two years old.  She still loves the great outdoors and plants, but since she suffers from an illness called Guillain-Barre syndrome she hasn¹t been as active as she would like.  Guillain-Barre syndrome, as I understood from Win¹s description, attacks the coating on the nerves so signals from the brain can¹t be transmitted to the muscles.  Guillain-Barre left Win almost completely paralyzed and she was in the hospital for about three months.  But she has regained an amazing amount of mobility and balance, and although she uses a cane to get around, she doesn¹t lean heavily on it.  She likes to quilt, too, suggesting no small amount of patience.

I am extremely impressed by this little lady sitting in front of me.  When I asked her what she felt about war today, she replies, "I don¹t think we [the whole world] are trying hard enough to find a prevention."  She does not relish the fact that she helped to kill millions of innocent people, and she almost feels guilty for having so much fun during the war.  She has shown me that history, a subject I have never particularly enjoyed, can be interesting and fun. 

Thank you, Win.