My Grandmother's History

She said this is here at age 16 when she graduated

 My grandparents wedding

 My grandmother with her son, Douglas

 This is her with my uncle, Keith

My grandmother and grandfather with my uncle Keith

I interviewed my grandmother to see what her life was like and what she thought of certain events.  She is very short breathed, she does not like to get too involved in details, and does not like to relive the past.

My grandmother, was born Phyliss Margarete Lotreck to Charles Eugene and Helen Marie Pomeroy in Chicago in 1922.  Her father was an immigrant and Helen's parents did not approve of their marriage.  They looked down on him because of the negative stigma attached to immigrants.  Regardless, Charles was a very smart man.  He put himself through college and became a self-made businessman.  My grandmother's mother, Helen, was a homemaker who tended to the couples four children.  When my grandmother was 4, her family moved from Chicago to Albany New York.  My grandmother tells me that her mother wanted to be closer with her father since her mother had died.  So over the years they moved from location to location inching closer and closer to the final destination; near Helen's father.  My grandmother recounts the time during the Great Depression.  Surprisingly, both of her parents had jobs.  Her father must have been a really noble man because he wanted his wife to leave her job so that someone else could have it. They must have been really well-to-do. At age 16 my grandmother graduated high school. After she graduated she went to North Hampton Community College which she says was just a business school. Here she learned how to be a secretary and learned how to use short hand.  Short hand was an abbreviated way of writing that allowed a person to write briefly and explain a lot at the same time. She attended the college for 1.5 years.  At 18 she went out and got a job as a secretary for a year. At 19 she went to Washington D.C. where she was a secretary for the Department of Defense; she worked there for 2 years. At 21 she was approached by her best friend, who was actually an army recruitment officer, and proposed that my grandmother join the Marine Corps.  She worked as a secretary during the time of WW2.  She never saw any battle but she says she had to fire a gun as part of training.  She got the title of Staff Sergeant.  After her time with the Marines, she went on to go to Boston University. She attended for 4 years and majored in advertising.  After she graduated she went to New York where she worked with Shell for a year (as a secretary).  She did not like the company so she left and joined Exxon, also as a secretary and also for 1 year.  She met my grandfather at New York State University at the registration booth.  My grandfather said that she was the most beautiful woman he had ever seen.  They got married in 1950 and had 5 children.  When she was 42, she worked as a teacher in Connecticut for 4 years, until my grandpa got transferred to Houston, Texas.  She held various jobs, some secretarial work here and there until she eventually went back to school to get her masters.  She always told me that in order to be a teacher back then you had to attain a masters degree.  Once she got her masters degree she taught school for about 9 years; until she retired at 60.  I asked her for her opinion on certain events.  I asked her what she thought about WWII while it was going on.  She didn't have much to say other than a generic " I wanted us to win (America) against the bad guys (Germany).  I also asked her to try and think what she felt whenever she found out that JFK had been shot.  She said she was shocked.