Transcript of interview with Florence McClure by Joanne Goodwin, January 24, 1996 & February 6, 1996

An Interview with Florence Alberta Schilling McClure An Oral History Conducted by Joanne L. Goodwin ______________________________________________ Las Vegas Women Oral History Project Series II. Community Builders Women’s Research Institute of Nevada University of Nevada, Las Vegas 2006 ii ? NSHE, UNLV, Las Vegas Women Oral History Project, 2006 Produced by: Las Vegas Women Oral History Project Women’s Research Institute of Nevada, UNLV, 4505 Maryland Parkway, Box 455083, Las Vegas, NV 89154-5083 Director and Editor: Joanne L. Goodwin iii iv v This interview and transcript have been made possible through the generosity of the Foundation at the University of Nevada, Las Vegas, the History Department, and the research efforts of the Women’s Research Institute of Nevada (WRIN). Located at UNLV within the College of Liberal Arts, WRIN is a statewide research institute with programs that add to the body of knowledge on women and girls in the state. WRIN has housed the oral history project since 1999. The specific goal of the oral history project is to acquire the narratives of Nevadans whose lives provide unique information on the development of the state and in particular, southern Nevada. In addition, the oral history project enables students and faculty to work together with community members to generate these first-person narratives. The participants in this project extend their appreciation to UNLV for providing an opportunity for this project to flourish. The text of this transcript has received minimal editing. These measures include the elimination of fragments, false starts, and repetition. The editing served to retain both the narrator’s style of spoken language as well as to enhance the reader’s understanding of the narrator’s words. Ideally, this oral history would be heard as well as read. In some cases, the narrator has provided photographic images to accompany the narrative. If the narrator agreed, these images have been donated with the transcript to the UNLV Lied Library, Special Collections. The following interview is part of a series of interviews conducted under the auspices of the Las Vegas Women Oral History Project, Series II. Community Builders. Additional transcripts may be found under that series title. Joanne L. Goodwin, Ph.D. Las Vegas Women Oral History Project, Director Associate Professor, Department of History University of Nevada, Las Vegas vi Preface Florence McClure came to Las Vegas later in her life, but the state felt her presence and the community her contributions as if she were a native daughter. Introduced to the League of Women Voters in 1967, McClure met her political mentor Jean Ford and learned how to practice the core elements of democracy. She put those tools to work in a number of ways, however her participation in the creation of the Rape Crises Center and her advocacy for locating the women’s prison near Las Vegas are two of her long-lasting efforts. Florence Alberta Schilling was born in southern Illinois where she enjoyed the security of a tight-knit family and the independence to test her abilities growing up. She graduated from high school and attended the MacMurray College for Women at Jacksonville. With the attack on Pearl Harbor in 1941, she began a series of jobs working for the war effort. She moved to Ypsilanti, Michigan with a girlfriend to work at the Willow Run Army Airbase and then moved to Miami, Florida where she worked for the Provost Marshall in the Security and Intelligence Division. She met her husband, James McClure, at the time and they married in 1945. During the next several years, they raised a family and moved around the country and to Japan with the military. McClure came to Las Vegas in 1966 as part of her work in the hotel industry which she engaged in after her husband’s retirement from the military. She had worked in California and Miami Beach, but it was Burton Cohen in Los Angeles who invited her to join him in a move to Las Vegas to build the new Frontier Hotel and Casino. Following the completion of the Frontier, she moved to the Desert Inn with Cohen in 1967 and worked as the executive office manager. After a few years, she decided to leave the vii industry and complete her college education. She graduated from UNLV in 1971with a BA in Sociology with an emphasis on criminology. She was 50 years old. McClure had been a member of the League of Women Voters for a few years at that point and had learned the political process from Jean Ford and workshops on lobbying. She had numerous skills that were waiting to be tapped when she attended an informational meeting on the incidence of rape in the Las Vegas valley. From that meeting, a small group of individuals, including McClure, began the organization Community Action Against Rape (later renamed the Rape Crisis Center) in 1973. It was the first agency in the area devoted to serving individuals who had been assaulted and changing the laws on rape. The organization’s first office was set up in McClure’s home. Over the next decade, she worked to change attitudes and reshape policy by constantly raising the issues of sexual assault with police officers, emergency room doctors, judges, and legislators. Her role as an advocate took her into hospital emergency rooms and courtrooms to assist victims. It also took her to the state legislator to lobby repeatedly for a change in laws. During this period, journalist Jan Seagrave gave McClure the nickname “Hurricane Florence” – a fitting moniker that captured the force with which McClure attacked the issue. As a result of her efforts and those of the people with whom she worked, we now 1) recognize rape as a crime of assault; 2) forbid the sexual history of a rape victim from being used against her in court; and 3) recognize marital rape. In addition to learning about Florence McClure’s activities, the reader of this interview will gain information on the role of civic organizations like the League of Women Voters in engaging the voluntary efforts of women in the post-war years. viii ix x Florence McClure, Las Vegas, Nevada, 1985. Courtesy of Florence McClure. xi An Interview with Florence Alberta Schilling McClure: An Oral History Conducted by Joanne L. Goodwin 1 This is Joanne Goodwin. I'm interviewing Florence McClure on January 24th, 1996 at the University of Nevada, Las Vegas on the subject of her early career, her move to Las Vegas and her involvement with Community Action Against Rape. Thank you for agreeing to this interview. I'm very excited about people having this information. Well, I'm glad to be here. I've been in this vicinity for nearly thirty years now. I wanted to begin our oral history with just a few questions about growing up; where you were born and when. I was born in Centralia, Marion County, Illinois on September the 26th, 1921. It was a farming community, a small town. Illinois Central Railroad did have a big industry there; they had a roundhouse. So, we heard a lot of train whistles going through during my early childhood and I miss them. It was the life that would be pretty much the same as a lot of people living in the mid-west in the 1920s. I enjoyed it growing up. I was a tomboy. I visited friends on their farms in the surrounding area during the summer when school was not in session. I went to [Washington] Irving School. It was both elementary and what they call middle school nowadays. Went two years to [Centralia Township] High School there and then went to Jacksonville, Illinois. My father was in a veteran's home in Jacksonville. So, my mother moved there with my sister and I. She was 22 months younger than I was and I went to school at Franklin School and then to Jacksonville, Illinois High School graduating in 1939. I had taken typing and shorthand and had become quite proficient at it. First of all, what were your parent's names? My mother's name was Grace Marie Marshall. My father's name was Louis Arthur Schilling. They met in Centralia at a big peach orchard and that is why my middle name 2 is Alberta. Needless to say, I didn't really care very much for it, but you know, there are Alberta peaches. But, they were all out there trying to help Mr. Perine get his crop of peaches on to the trains and disseminated them all over the country. You had one sister? I had one sister. Any brothers? No brothers. Did your parents have any particular views on raising their daughters when you were growing up? Do you remember any attitudes about what a woman could do? Well, you see, my father went into a veteran's home just a very few years after my birth, so therefore, I did not have contact with most men. It was my mother and her mother, my grandmother, who lived right behind us. She was a widow. Her husband died in 1901 in a hunting accident. I was born in 1921, so, see, I didn't get to see him. My great-grandmother who lived about five blocks further south, my great-grandmother and I always think of her as an older women. That's the only way that I can see her. She had been a widow for 44 years before her death. Her husband died in 1895. That would be my, James Patrick Tompkins. So, I did not have many men around me. But, I was a tomboy. I played more with boys growing up. I played football, and I mean tackle football, not touch football. The mother's got very upset that a girl was playing with this group of boys, football. But, that was my interest. I was not very much of a, playing with dolls. My sister leaned in that direction, but I was sports, climbing trees, going on hikes, that sort of thing. What was your sister's name? 3 Rilla Maria Ruble and she was named after our great-grandmother, Katherine Ruble Hagar Tompkins. So, you grew up among a number of women? That's right. I had no males around that were telling me what to do. My father, when I got to see him and, of course, as I said, that we moved up in about 1937 to Jacksonville, Illinois and then I got to see him quite often. But, my father was a very wonderful man and he had been in World War I, in France. My mother was really in charge, but my mother's health was not the greatest. So, I was given a lot of leeway and on my own and I perceived my mother, my grandmother and my great-grandmother, three generations of women, who in one way or another had lost their husbands and they, I saw them as survivalists. They were working? No, they were working in the home. My great-grandmother did have money coming in because her husband did have large orchards. When he died, he had land and he had some wealth, so there was nothing to worry about there. My grandmother, however, did work and she was a housekeeper for two men who worked with the railroad and they had traveling jobs. They had a sister they took care of, so my grandmother was the housekeeper for that household. But, she maintained her home right behind us. And your mother was in the home raising you? That's right. When you left high school, did you have any expectation that you would be supporting yourself or were you thinking you would be married and work like your mother in the home. 4 No, I really was into books. I had started early on reading everything I could put my hands on. I will say that all of my family, my two grandparents, my grandmother and her mother, were readers. They came out of Tennessee, northern Tennessee, Hartsville, Truesdale County, in that area. My great-grandmother came from Lebanon, Tennessee. I had visited that whole area there since their death. But, they were readers and they got me involved in reading and you can always escape any unpleasantness that you may see around you by going into books and I think I read every, practically every library book at our Andrew Carnegie Free Public Library in Centralia in the children's department. Now, they would not allow me to go up into the adult section of the library and get books out. Remember, I went into high school when I was thirteen. So, how did we overcome that? The Sunday school teacher, Goldena Welden, was the librarian and she knew my mother was not well, which was true. Mother wrote a note to her saying that “I would appreciate your allowing Florence to get books out of the library upstairs for me.” And, of course, I was the one who was doing the reading. But, this was one way we got beyond that old, stupid rule that you could not read anything in the adult library. That's marvelous, that's great. Now, you were in high school and part of college during the depression, is that right? No, I was in high school during the depression. I graduated from Jacksonville, Illinois where the veteran's hospital was, where my father was at. I graduated there in '39 and, yes, in '39, of course, we had from '29, 1929 when they had the crash. But, my father, because of his injuries in France, my mother received a sum of money each month. So, that allowed us, and we owned our own home. We rented it out to other people when we went to Jacksonville and then when I graduated in 1939, I did have a chance to go to the 5 University of Illinois, had it practically all sewed up, had a place to live and then my mother decided I was too young. I was seventeen. She decided I was too young to go into that urban area of Champaign-Urbana. The minister had taken us up there, the Reverend Dan Crane of the Methodist Church there in Jacksonville, had taken us up to make arrangements for me to go to school there because his son, Bruce, was going to school there. But, my mother prevailed and said you will have to go to MacMurray College for Women at Jacksonville, which I did. I think I probably would have done better if, in my college years, I had gone to Champaign-Urbana, but that is just a guess. Any distinct impressions of the depression when you were in the teen years? Yes. We had an apartment, one time, and the stove, this was in Jacksonville, and the stove was one that you would put quarters in, in order to get gas to cook. And, of course, I'd never seen a stove that you had to put quarters in to get gasoline to cook your food. There were just things like that. We lived near the veteran's hospital where my father was and I was in the 6th grade at Franklin School in Jacksonville and I had the most wonderful teacher. My teachers, the ones I had at the high school in Centralia, Miss Hartley and Miss Stedland, and then Miss Sail in Jacksonville, my 6th grade teacher, [were wonderful]. Miss Sail took a special interest in me and she had a straw poll on the election. Now, we had candidates Hoover and Roosevelt and she took a straw poll. Now, my family were Republicans. They were down state Illinois people and they were Republicans, but I liked what Franklin Roosevelt was saying and, of course, we're talking about the New Deal. She had all of her students, she informed them, she taught, she was one of the most enthusiastic teachers. I think that's what we need now days is someone to turn the kids 6 on. She turned me on to politics. From then, I got my grandmother and my mother to vote Democrat. [chuckle] And, I think . . . How did you do that? Just by talking it up and saying, look what he's saying and look what he's saying and I felt sorry for Mr. Hoover, you know, the two chickens in the pot, you know, deal, a chicken in every pot. So, it was really growing up, but I think it was the people I met along the way, teachers. As you can see, I can name the teachers who made an impression on me and I will be 75 this year. People don't ordinarily remember the names of people who they are not impressed with. What did you do after graduation? Well, I worked in '39, you see, for the summers between schooling, during, between my sophomore and junior year and my junior and senior year, I worked for New Method Bookbindery in Jacksonville. It was one of the best and is probably still one of the best bookbinderies in the country. Their motto was, "bound to stay bound." They were on Kosciusko Street in a residential neighborhood and they had built a larger plant elsewhere, outside of town now. But, at that time, I met people that were in the work world and I paged books to insure that every page was there before that book was rebound, if it was an old book, and then, some publishers would send in brand new books that were to be rebound before they went on library shelves because the bookbinding on the original volume was not strong enough to hold up. So, they'd sent it straight to the bindery and I worked on it. I started out with new books and later on older ones during those summer vacations. That money went into a fund to help pay my tuition and my clothing and my books that I would need for college. I remember one of the big texts that 7 we got in, and that was Louisiana State University's old books that they wanted to preserve and, because they were crumbling, you know, the acid in paper will destroy a book. And, so, what we did, was to encase a page that was crumbly in a form of rice paper on both sides and when it was applied on both sides and put under bricks, over night, when you saw it the next day, you couldn't even tell that it had a cover on it because it was such a fine grade of rice, Japanese rice paper. Of course, we hadn't come to 1941 yet and we were using that type of paper to bind our books. Now, in October 1941, you graduated from the business college, I believe. Yes, about October of '41, went to work for J. Capps and Sons as a bookkeeper. They were a company that made custom-made suits, beautiful men's clothing. They did do a few suits for women, but mostly the work was custom made men’s garments. The materials were coming from Scotland, England, and places like that. They had a branch office over in St. Louis and they had an office in Jacksonville, Illinois, J. Capps and Sons. So, I left college. I knew there were some problems and I left college after a year and a half, went to business college, graduated in October, went to work for J. Capps and Sons. Then on December the 7th, I was living next to MacMurray College for Women, and that Sunday morning hearing that radio announcement of the bombing of Pearl Harbor I knew our lives were going to change. That there would have to be a big effort put forth by the American people. The company, J. Capps and Sons, cut back. The men's suits no longer could have wide lapels, they couldn't have cuffs on the suits, they had the same material. Everything was save, save, save. So, they asked me, because they were going to downsize the plant, they asked me to go to St. Louis and take over the office, run the office for them in St. Louis. But, I thought it over and decided not to go to St. Louis. 8 I'd been to St. Louis a number of times and it was about 96 miles away. I loved the Forest Park Zoo, but I did not relish living out and then having to go downtown to an office each day. There would be just about two or three people in that office that I would manage. Materials were going to be scarce. They would probably have more rulings; what they called “war production” rules were going to cut us down because it was a civil industry instead of being a munitions making industry or something of that sort. So, I then took the examination for the State and went to work in the Springfield, Illinois, 35 miles from Jacksonville, and I worked for the Department of Public Welfare in Springfield. What did you do? I worked in the purchasing department working with one of the main purchasing men. Then I worked for a woman director, one of the first that I had ever seen where a woman had broken the glass ceiling, as I look at it now. But, she was a dynamic woman out of Chicago. She spent more time in Chicago than she did there for the State. Dwight Green was governor and worked on purchases that were needed to run the State hospitals and, of course, that would mean Danville, Illinois, all over the State. So, that's when I found out that a shoat, which I'd never heard of before, was a little pig and so, but one of the things I've learned something on every job. That's the idea. What other type of war work were you involved in? Oh, they desperately needed help, of course, and as I've said, I had two years of typing and shorthand – I could take fairly rapid shorthand. The federal government wanted help and we were asked to go to Willow Run, now, we're talking about Michigan, Ypsilanti, southeast of Detroit and I worked at Willow Run Army Air base to begin with; they were training mechanics for the B-24 bomber. A plane that some people called a “flying 9 coffin” and other people said, “it saved my life.” I've heard both versions. It was a twin tail. I worked there on the air base for the Commander and the Judge Advocate General for the base. I did legal briefings and some of the people, some of the misfits that were in the military, were discharged under what they called “section eight.” I handled some of those boards, worked with the J.A. But, it was cold and we were working in what I call a tar-paper shack. Not living in, I had an apartment in Ann Arbor. We had feet, oh, maybe, 36 inches of snow outside and we could see through the wall cracks. We had a pot-bellied stove and we'd have to go warm our hands around the potbelly then go back to our typewriters until our hands starting getting cold again. Then we had to go back and we didn't have electric typewriters then. We had the kind you had to pound, the old Royals, the old Underwoods, that sort of thing. So, you were involved at the Willow Run Base and . . . Army Air Base, see, because the Air Force was army under the army then. It was Army Air Corps and not until later would the Air Force become a separate branch of the service. But, we worked there until they needed no more trained mechanics for the B-24. They needed help over at Willow Run Bomber Plant when Henry Ford was still alive, old Henry, and Charles Lindberg was over there and they had a large assembly plant. The B-24 bomber was coming off the line and they desperately needed our help, so, when they 10 Florence (left) with her family in Centralia, Illinois. Father, Louis Arthur Schilling; mother, Grace Marie Marshall; and younger sister Rilla. Courtesy of Florence McClure. 11 Florence McClure as a young adult in Illinois. Courtesy of Florence McClure 12 closed the base down, they transferred us to the big Willow Run Bomber Plant which later became the airport for Detroit. Metropolitan Airport now? Yes. What years were you there? Let's see. I went up in '43 to Michigan. Went up in '43. About, maybe, early '43 and then later, went to Florida with my Uncle. It was so cold up there. He was going to Miami, Miami Beach area and he talked me in, that was my mother's brother, Uncle John, and he talked me into going to Florida. I bet that sounded good. Yes, especially because it was so cold up there, but, oh, I loved Michigan and even on cold days and those sunsets that they would have on that drifting snow, I can still visualize it. Did you ever go into the campus in Ann Arbor? You said you lived in Ann Arbor. Oh, yes. In fact, I did work at one of their halls there for the U. S. O. The U. S. O. was there, of course, to entertain and have dances and so forth for soldiers and Army Air Corps. I didn't go in for the dancing. I went in and did their administrative paperwork, typing letters thanking people in the community who had donated candies and cookies and sandwiches for these parties that the U. S. O. gave for the military that were in the Ann Arbor district. Do you remember a big campaign to get women involved in the war effort? 13 Yes, Rosie the Riveter. You see, I worked at Willow Run, I worked up in the offices. And, of course, on the whole, wore civilian clothes. The girls that were out there on those aircraft, I would go out into the plant because I had to go to purchasing. I handled critical shortage items. See, I was about 22, 23 at this time, but my voice has always been older. Some people, when I talk on the phone, think I'm a gentleman, instead of a lady and they've said, yes sir. I just left it alone. I would call up the depot out in California and say we have a critical shortage, whether it be a rivet or some other part for an aircraft. That is what I did. I had a watts telephone line where I could call at different places and a lot of the work, they thought I was much older than what I was and I had, my boss had been in World War I, he had been Canadian and, I [was] very fond of him. He was a gentleman but he had a drinking problem. He was an alcoholic. He belonged to AA and he had someone who was trying to get him to stay on the wagon, but every once in a while he slipped off and I had to, I got his telephone and hid it under the desk and did things like that because, but he had been a person who had been injured in World War I, just like my father and so, that was, and I would handle the calls. So, it was either do that or he could get into trouble too. They did know of some of his problems and then I would call his partner who was supposed to keep him on the wagon, I'd call him over in Detroit and then he'd make arrangements. When you went to Willow Run, you went alone. Did you... No, I had a girlfriend. Fern Hermann was from Illinois. She lived a number of miles away, but we, I met her when I roomed at her aunt's home in Springfield, when I got my job with the State government in welfare. And so, Fern says, they want, they would like you and me to go to Michigan. Of course, she wanted somebody she knew to go with her. 14 So, hey, I was about 21 and she was about my age too, about the same age. We'd come from small towns in Illinois. We had a lot in common. I was of German extraction with Schilling and so was she with Hermann. So, we went together up to Michigan and we roomed together. So, I wasn't exactly alone, but we started out, we met at her aunt's home where she had a room and I had a room. So, then you moved to sunny Florida. Yes, with my uncle. We went through Hopkinsville, Kentucky and, of course, gasoline was rationed then, but he was able to get dispensation or extra tickets to make the trip. He did have a car, my uncle. He was out of Agnew, California area. But, he wanted to go back to Florida where he had been before the bust in 1929. He had been down there and he talked about the old glamour of Florida, Flagler, some of the big names that were in there. He was there before, in the early 1920s. So, he bought a home there out in, not in downtown area of Florida but off to the southwest. I obtained a job with the government on Miami Beach. You had the Army Ground and Service Forces Redistribution Center and it was where all the men who were coming out of the war areas in Europe were coming into Miami on redistribution. It was a kind of a period of rest and recuperation and redistribution. Those who had been in for a certain number of years were allowed to be released. So, we want to continue with your time in Miami and the work you did there. Yes, when I went to work for the Army Ground and Service Forces Redistribution Center, I found it was too far from my uncle's home, so, I started looking on Miami Beach for a place to live; on South Beach, as they call it nowadays. I found the Casa Francisca which was operated by the Dominican nuns out of their home station, now 15 being Michigan. I could get a residence at $35 a month. Now, there was no food served but there were a number of places in the area where you could get short order food and more. So, I made the move to Miami Beach and I could walk to work. One of the things I would like to state at this time, in 1944, I would walk to work, and a lot of the houses and apartments had signs that would say, “no Jews allowed.” I am not Jewish, but that so infuriated me that people would have made these signs and hung it on the porches, “no Jews allowed,” because later on it would become more important. And so, I would walk to work and, oh, I loved the smell of the star jasmine, the bougainvilleas were beautiful, hibiscus, all of the flowers that I could not grow in the mid-west were laid out there. And, they were just beautiful, wonderful with the smell. Is this when you got involved with your hotel work? No. That would come much later in my life, but I was working for the Intelligence Division of the Army Ground and Service Corps Redistribution, because the male prisoners that were coming back from Europe, some of them had been prisoners, and they had to have a debriefing and that debriefing was done at that station at Miami. Now, I handled things for the Provost Marshall, but we were part of the Security and Intelligence Division. We had top court reporters that would sit down and take the statements of all of the prisoners that had come back from Europe because all of those reports would be read by people in Washington and elsewhere whose business it was to know about the intelligence and what had happened in Europe, what had happened to them and some of them, of course, had been treated brutally. They would be sent from this facility to their hometown and there would be records kept on them. It all had to be a matter of record. Most of my work was in preparing cases that would go to the Judge Advocate for trials. 16 You'd have a summary court marshal, of course, which could be handled by Company Commander and then you'd have a special court marshal and then you could have general court marshal for officers and I saw all three of them handled. I had some bizarre characters. I had one man who had gone AWOL and he was, he had been recovered, brought in. His hands were so badly eaten by fungus when he was in the tropics and, you see, a lot of the men who went into the service were what we would have called then ‘hillbillies.’ They had never been to a metro area. Here they were all thrown in to the war. All they could think about was their wife and children back home. I do think that there was not proper screening done early on when these men were admitted into the service. Some of them could not read or write. One Commander told me one time, “I told them they weren't going to get paid unless they learned to write their name and they did learn to write their name.” They had others who were teachers sit down, write their name for the men, and then have them practice writing their name. That was all they had. Then I had one that I called him Ribbons Phillips and he was out of the Chicago area and his mother had to call the MPs to have them come and get him. He would put all kinds of medals on, whether he was entitled to them or not. We called him Ribbons Phillips and he was assigned to a company, of course, but they would discharge him or put him in a stockade someplace. Once Ribbons took the scissors off my desk when I had my back turned and went into the bathroom. See, all of our offices were in hotels there in Miami Beach. So, every room had its own bathroom and he went into the bathroom and locked the door and all I could think about was, he's going to commit suicide or do something like that. So, I went over and pounded on the door and I said, Ribbons, you come on out of there and I wasn't going to plead, I was more or less ordering him. I said, I order you to 17 come out of there. Of course, I didn't have a uniform on. I was a civilian. But, he came out and all he wanted to do, evidently, was trim his mustache, but all I was thinking about was he will do something and we will all get blamed for what he did. But, I saw some of the sordid side of life and that's why I'm in favor of peace but not at any cost. To my father and so many of my ancestors, I've found from researching, everything seemed to be military all the way. You know. So many of them were in the service going back to the American Revolution. My husband’s ancestry is the same. I do genealogy for the family and I've seen all of these wars that have occurred over the years and it's disheartening. Tell me about your husband. He was Company Commander – in the Army they are called companies and in the Air Force they're called squadrons – he's been both, in both branches of the service, but at that time, he was a company commander. I have to take that back, he became a company commander. When I first met him he was the club officer of the Officer's Club at the Cromwell Hotel in Miami Beach. But, shortly thereafter, he asked for duty station on Miami Beach instead of going to another duty station elsewhere and he got what he wanted. He had been a prisoner of war of the Japanese in the Philippine Islands. The government did try to give the men their requests. He wanted to stay in a tropical climate because he'd