3. Camp Adair

Velma Carter Rawie: but the old one, is still down there.

Bob Zybach: So, that wasn't her maiden name was it? Fleischman?

Velma Carter Rawie: No, but that was her married name and she didn't marry a Murphy for oh. . . I was married and lived out here before she married because I knew her first as Bessie Fleischman. I think she married Murphy after Ralph and I moved out. I couldn't tell you just when, but I knew her first as Bessie Fleischman.

Bob Zybach: Uh huh. Was she working at Oregon State [University] at that time?

Velma Carter Rawie: Yeah. Uh huh.

Bob Zybach: When you were young and your dad was working on the fann, just you two girls, did you have to do any particular chores that were fann related.

Velma Carter Rawie: Well, Bess and I, the house wasn't big enough for the both of us, like a lot of sisters, you know. So she was the one that stayed in the house and I was the one that followed Dad behind the plow outside. I mean, I was a tomboy. Let's face it. I still am to a certain extent. [Laughter]

Bob Zybach: Viz huh. So you preferred working out...?

Velma Carter Rawie: Oh yeah, and I still prefer working outside, in the yard and whatnot.

3. Camp Adair

Bob Zybach: So all the domestic chores, Bessie was learning that.

Velma Carter Rawie: Yeah, and as I say, to this day. . . well even after we . . . Then as I say, when Camp Adair took over mothers farm out there, we moved back to town and mother moved to town and we both bought new houses in town [Corvallis]. Mother bought one down on Western Avenue. It's where the campus police office is now right across from Parker Stadium. That was the house that she bought and lived in.

Bob Zybach: Oh, so your mother lived right in the house?

Velma Carter Rawie: Yeah, and we bought a new one. . . We were the second house north of Harding school on 31st street when we came back into town in [19] '41.

Bob Zybach: This is kind of skipping ahead a little bit but, when Camp Adair got built, it looks like in the aerial photos that there is a lazge expansion of housing in Con'allis. Did a lot of the people from Camp Adair, working constrnction or living there, live in town here?

Velma Carter Rawie: They begged for places for people to live, even after the troops moved out here. Lots of times their families would come out here and they just went from door to door asking for places to sleep . . . other families to sleep. And that's where my youngest son, who was just 50 on Saint Patrick's Day, we call him "Moe", his name is Melvin, but a little gal from Arkansas, who's husband was stationed out here, rented a room from us. We had a big new house and we had lots of room. They don't pronounce their L's or something and she tried to call him "Mel" and it came out "Moe." He's been "Moe" ever since.

Bob Zybach: Did most the families in town... were they cooperative in providing housing?

Velma Carter Rawie: Oh yeah, an awful lot of people opened up their homes to them.

Bob Zybach: Was that for patriotism or for income?

Velma Carter Rawie: Both. It was.. . The people were desperate. Their fRmilies would follow them out here and there was no. . . We weren't prepared. Corvallis or Albany, nobody was prepared for anything like that.

Bob Zybach: When the fa,niies had to move from Adair and the government came in and bought the...

Velma Carter Rawie: Wait a minute, the government came in before they ever bought it. It was condenination is what it was. But they came in and tore down fences on my mothers farm and started building a railroad spur and all mother knew was that the government was going to take her farm. So, she took her shotgun out and stopped them and she stopped them! She got her money.

Bob Zybach: Now, was your dad...

Velma Carter Rawie: My father was deceased. She was all alone at that time

Bob Zybach: So the government came out and were building a raifroad and she attacked them with a shotgun?

Velma Carter Rawie: Well, I wouldn't say that she attacked them, but she let them know that it was her property and they were trespassing.

Bob Zybach: Uh huh. And they stopped?

Velma Carter Rawie: And they stopped.

Bob Zybach: When the government came out then, that was before Pearl Harbor wasn't it?

Velma Carter Rawie: No, it was after Pearl Harbor. Well now wait, Pearl Harbor was December 7, 1941. Wasn't it?

Bob Zybach: I think so.

Velma Carter Rawie: Well, it all happened all about the same time. Let's face it, they had to have a camp or a place on the west coast. Things grew real fast and mother got, we had a hundred acres, and mother got 100 dollars an acre.

Bob Zybach: Was she upset about that?

Velma Carter Rawie: Well, yes! If you had lost your husband and then you lost your home, all within a very short period of time, wouldn't you be upset? You know, I mean that was the only life that my mother knew.

Bob Zybach: U/i huh. So how long had your father been dead at that time?

Velma Carter Rawie: He died in '37.

Bob Zybach: And then the government bought [her farm] in '41.

Velma Carter Rawie: It was '41 because Melvin was born in March of '41 and that was.. . He was just a tiny baby when we moved to town.

Bob Zybach: Uh huh. And so you were living on the farm with your mother at the time?

Velma Carter Rawie: Uh huh. Both of my boys were born up there after my father had died.

Bob Zybach: What was the attitude of the neighbors about the government...

Velma Carter Rawie: Terrible! But there was no "ifs", "ands", or "buts".. . just when. An awful lot of the people died very shortly afterwards. When you displace somebody who's been a farmer all of their life basically, they are a little too old to start farming all over again. We didn't have time to go out and buy a farm.

Bob Zybach: U/i huh. And a lot of those families had been there for...

Velma Carter Rawie: Always.

Bob Zybach: their whole lives?

Velma Carter Rawie: Yeah, that was their homes.

Bob Zybach: Was there settlement? Did anybody notice that these people started dying?. . .thinking that the displacement was causing that or is that just something that you are thinking back on?

Velma Carter Rawie: I'm just think back on it now. The people who, within a couple of years . . . I can think of three of four of the men especially... I think it's a little easier for a woman maybe. But a man who doesn't know anything but farming, to move to town.. . and a lot of them, they weren't old people, but.. . and they didn't get enough for their farms to go out and live and buy another farm.

Bob Zybach: Did they remain bitter? They were upset about moving but did they think there was maybe something... they were helping out the war? ... they had to do it, it was their duty?

Velma Carter Rawie: I can't say how other people felt. My mother was bitter about it.

Bob Zybach: And she stayed bitter?

Velma Carter Rawie: No, no. She wasn't one to carry a grudge but at the time she was... If somebody just came in and said, "We're going to take over your farm and build and army camp, and you've got to get out and you've got to get out now." She had her animals she had to get rid of. She had to find a place to live. It wasn't just her, it was everybody.

Bob Zybach: I've heard that they went into a lot of the pioneer cemeteries and actually moved them. Was that...?

Velma Carter Rawie: There's one cemetery that is called the Ridder's cemetery out on the road that they did fence a small area. It was a private cemetery on the Ridder's ranch. They put a chain link fence around that small area. I can't think of any.. it seems like, no . . . I don't think they actually. . . I don't remember at the time. Of course as I think back, I think, "Why didn't I pay more attention to that?" But at the time when things are happening, you don't think so much about it really. I mean, in the sense of what happened to things because after all, I was fairly newly married and had a young family. . . . had problems of my own. Not problems, but responsibilities and stuff. You just don't think. . . but then as I get older and as my grandparents passed away and them my mother, who lived to be 93, now I'm the oldest Carter around. People start asking me questions and I have to really stop and think. I was like a lot of kids when I was growing up, I didn't pay a lot of attention.

Bob Zybach: It seemed like there were more important things at the time?

Velma Carter Rawie: Uh huh.

Bob Zybach: Then when they came in, they started tearing down the houses and digging up the cemeteries. Did that cause additional problems?

Velma Carter Rawie: I don't remember them digging up any cemeteries. I know that they did fence that one. It seems like . . . in the back of my mind there was something about disturbing graves. As I say, I don't for sure...