Oral History Interview with Carol Wheelock

[Interview Begins]

SPRAGUE: Today is March 21st, 2023. This is an interview with Carol Wheelock, who served in the United States Air Force from 1958 to 1959 through 1959.

WHEELOCK: Yes.

SPRAGUE: Okay. Did you enter the service as Carol Wheelock?

WHEELOCK: No. My maiden name was Carol Brisbane.

SPRAGUE: Brisbane. Okay. Like, spelled like the spitting City of Brisbane in Australia.

WHEELOCK: Some of the relatives spell it that way. We spell it b i n at the end price. B I am.

SPRAGUE: Okay. Brisbane. Okay. Got it. Okay. This is an interview being conducted by Luke Sprague at the Manitowoc Public Library for the I Am Not Invisible Project as part of the Wisconsin Veterans Museum Oral History Program. No one else is present in the room. First of all, Carol, do you remember in 1958 when you joined other I.

WHEELOCK: I think it was in May after I turned 18, I was still yet in high school, but I went and tried to sign up at that time and they said okay. And then I got out a little early for high school. So I then worked at getting down to Detroit for transportation out to right here for my final go around. And then they sent me to Lackland in Texas.

SPRAGUE: Okay.

WHEELOCK: For basic training.

SPRAGUE: Okay. And we'll we're going to talk about all of that. We're going to come back to that if we can. Where did you where did you grow up?

WHEELOCK: Flint, Michigan.

SPRAGUE: Okay. And what did your family do there?

WHEELOCK: My father had his own business. It was a garage business that he worked on. Heavy duty trucks, semis, things like that. And also people's automobiles as needed. Yeah, no. And I started out at 12 years old working with him in his garage. He taught me how to grind vales and set them up, and I had to get them perfect. So I was taught how to use micrometers for measuring and things like that. And I would go back to grade school and tell the teacher what I had learned. And she didn't even quite at that time understand what it all meant. And then I had to explain it to her. But it was fun.

SPRAGUE: Mm hmm. What was your dad's business name in in Michigan? Or did he just go by his own name?

WHEELOCK: I think he just Brisbane's garage and Dort Highway in Flint. And there he also told me about times when he would go down to Detroit and teach diesel mechanics to the people that took care of busses and big trucks and things like that. So he was an expert diesel mechanic.

SPRAGUE: Okay. And what schools did you go to?

WHEELOCK: I went to at that time, it was Lower Junior, Junior high. I can't remember the name of the grade school offhand right now. And then my high school was Flint Tech and it was a technical high school where I was. Asked to. Join. But you have to have a certain grade point average to get in. And I pass that for girls. They had to have a B grade point average. And for fellows you had to have a, B, C average. And so it was a small high school. There weren't many of us in there, but it being technical, I was able to move my education rate a little faster. I was basically done with my first three years of high school by junior year. So my senior year I started my college education and then I also worked half days for grade point from my employer. He greeted me and I did all of his bookkeeping and stuff for his grocery store chain.

SPRAGUE: Okay.

WHEELOCK: And yeah, so I had like I said, by then, I also had almost a whole year of college in my first year of college. So.

SPRAGUE: So when you got out of high school, you said you did you join right when you were 18 or did you.

WHEELOCK: Yeah, yeah, Yeah. Yeah. So. Yeah.

SPRAGUE: Okay. What did your family say about joining the military?

WHEELOCK: Well, I had a few uncles that weren't happy about it because they were in the military. My father always was progressive with me. He said, Do what you want to do. That's the real point. My mother, she wasn't real thrilled about me moving away, but she soon understood that this is what I wanted to do. And then she accepted it.

SPRAGUE: And why did you pick the Air Force?

WHEELOCK: There was a few I had always had an interest in. I had an uncle that lived in northern Michigan, the lower part, but in the northern section that worked at an Air Force base, he was with the fire department and he was the fire chief on the Air Force base. And that was where they first brought the f-100 out the very first back. And that just intrigued me to the point where that's where I want to go. That's what I want to do. So that's what I did. Okay.

SPRAGUE: Let's go ahead and just pause the interview for a moment here. This is Look Sprague Ending segment one. This is Luke Sprague and Carol Wheelock, and this is segment two. And we were talking Carol and I were talking about her. My next question for her was, oh, what do you remember about traveling to boot camp or basic training?

WHEELOCK: Well, it was mostly by train. And the one thing I remember getting down to Texas, we stopped at a very large town area, but I can't recall the town there then so long ago. But this was during the age of. Discrimination you might call it, which is why we call it that now. But and I just was not used to that type of discrimination because where I grew up, blacks and whites just grew up together. I had good friends that were black, went to school with black kids and all of that. So it just never really paid much attention to the differences between us. And I remember getting off of the train. Then I had to get on a bus, but I had to wait for a bus to get me. In the meantime, I'm sitting, I'm getting thirsty. I found a water fountain to get a drink out of. And I was I just walked up to it and started drinking. And all of a sudden a lady came over to me and she said, Ma'am, you can't drink out of that fountain. That's for blacks only. And I looked at her so odd, and I said, What do you mean, black Salt Lake? She said, We have a white drinking fountain and a black drinking fountains. We have white bathrooms and black bathrooms. And I looked at her and I said, Oh, man, oh, man, this isn't good. And after that, I had a lot of trouble adjusting to that because I was forever going in the wrong place, using the wrong facility or drinking from the wrong phone. When I got on the bus. I went to the back of the bus because that's where I liked riding in busses and at home. I couldn't do that. Couldn't do that with the greyhounds going down south in the Deep South because the back of the bus was for the blacks. So they made me sit up front and I hated it.

SPRAGUE: Huh.

WHEELOCK: So that was a eye opener for me. It was a real eye opener with how the discrimination was. Yeah. So.

SPRAGUE: What? Where was your basic training?

WHEELOCK: At a Lackland Air Force base down in San Antonio, Texas.

SPRAGUE: And what were some of the things that you remember from basic things that stick out in your head after all these years? Oh.

WHEELOCK: Geez. I don't know. It was. It was so long ago, there wasn't too much. I mean, we just did what we were told and no talking back. And listen to what he said. You know what's being said to you and then following through. But yeah, that's about it. Another thing that kind of got me was how we had the line up in a row and walk past this person that was giving us shots one right after another. And yeah, that was an eye opener. But we got through it. Yeah.

SPRAGUE: Was it just women in your unit or were there men in your unit?

WHEELOCK: Yeah, there were all women in my unit. Yeah, it was all female. Yeah. And we were trained accordingly. And I remember we actually took first place in our marching abilities for the basic training groups. We had a pretty sharp looking unit.

SPRAGUE: Do you happen to remember the unit name?

WHEELOCK: I don't.

SPRAGUE: Okay.

WHEELOCK: I really don't.

SPRAGUE: Was what were some of the things that they trained you in, in terms of your uniform?

WHEELOCK: Like your basic, basically. They trained us every bit. Like they trained the men in basic training, learning how to shoot rifles and how to walk ten miles with backpacks on and everything, you know, like they did with the man that was about about it, that we did whatever they were trained to do.

SPRAGUE: Was your unit racially integrated at that point?

WHEELOCK: Yes, it was. Mm hmm.

SPRAGUE: Okay.

WHEELOCK: Yeah.

SPRAGUE: What was it like being exposed to people from outside of Michigan? People from all over the country.

WHEELOCK: Where I. I don't know quite how to answer that. I didn't have any problems meeting people or adjusting to them. Mm hmm. It. It didn't impress. It didn't really impress me all that much.

SPRAGUE: Okay.

WHEELOCK: You just met them, and that was it. Yeah. Met and accepted.

SPRAGUE: And accepted. Okay.

WHEELOCK: Yeah.

SPRAGUE: Did you. Did your family come down for the graduation?

WHEELOCK: No, they did not.

SPRAGUE: And do you remember anybody specifically from Basic at this point?

WHEELOCK: I don't know. I. I'm sorry. I don't recall.

SPRAGUE: Were your instructors men or women or both?

WHEELOCK: Our unit, our basic training unit. That was a female instructor for us here. She was a sergeant female.

SPRAGUE: Okay, So after basic, did you attend some additional or advanced training? Like, I.

WHEELOCK: I don't know. I don't recall training. After basic they sent us back. We had I think it was like a week and a half or something like that. We could go back home for a visit and then we were sent to our new base, which then for me was straight down to Florida at an Air Force base. But I got about a week and a half off after training, after basic. And our basic training. The length of that, I believe it was 12 weeks of basic health. Most of the men had eight weeks. But our unit for some reason had 12. And I don't really remember why.

SPRAGUE: What? Okay, so you get. You go home. You come home on leave.

WHEELOCK: Mm hmm.

SPRAGUE: You're assigned to Eglin Air Force Base. Mm hmm. First of all, did you have any choice in getting assigned to that unit or that area or.

WHEELOCK: No, I didn't. They just told me where I was going and where I was going to be working. And that was it.

SPRAGUE: Yeah.

WHEELOCK: Yeah. So they took me down to the airforce base, took us to our barracks, and they told us where we would be working in the day that we had to sign in for that position for the job, where we had to go and stuff like that. So take care of paperwork, that sort of thing. They took me out to site 19, which is where I had to work, and it was way out in the boondocks. Way out. And it was a rather strange looking concrete building. No windows, no nothing. Steel doors, guard armed guards standing on the outside. Armed guards standing on the inside.

SPRAGUE: So what was the name of the unit you were assigned to?

WHEELOCK: A research and development.

SPRAGUE: Okay. Do you remember by chance? Within Air, Air Research and Development Command. Do you happen to remember maybe a squadron or a group or a detachment within that that you were in by chance, like a sub unit?

WHEELOCK: No, I don't. I was just taken into the building, showed where I was going to be, my office housed in with a staff sergeant and then a private office of ours with a door on it where our colonel had his office. And in the open area of the office is where I had my desk and stuff.

SPRAGUE: Now, you had talked about this in the pre-interview, and you talk about it being out in the boondocks.

WHEELOCK: It was way out.

SPRAGUE: Was it on or was it on Eglin Air Force Base or was it one of the out station? Eglin has a bunch of Hurlburt Field, a bunch of other places, or was it directly?

WHEELOCK: It was part of the Air Force base, but it was out. It was secluded.

SPRAGUE: Okay.

WHEELOCK: But then Eglin Air Force Base was very large and very spread out. So, yeah, it was odd because. Beyond us yet out in the country. I say that's where they train pilots and things like that. People like that for survival. And they would be taken out there and be let out there for about two weeks for survival training if they would crash and survive or parachute out, what have you, and be out in the god awful no population areas. So they were taught how to survive that.

SPRAGUE: Uh huh.

WHEELOCK: And in fact, we would bring several service personnel down to and from Andrews Air Force Base for TDY, and they would be taken out there for their survival training. And then when they were done, we would fly a pretty much a plane full back up to Andrews.

SPRAGUE: Huh? Now, you had mentioned you had talked and described in the pre-interview the projects that you were tracking in and that you were tracking from that building.

WHEELOCK: Right. They we were a branch off of Nassau. And when Nassau was sending the Sands or the Discovery Space ships of, we would monitor their trajectory, their orbit, and their landing on screens. And I would monitor that on a screen down in the control room when ever we would have a shoot from Nassau. Mm hmm. And that was the only time I would be down there by the screens is during a shoot. Otherwise, I was in my office upstairs in.

SPRAGUE: Where was Nassau shooting out of. Just for the record.

WHEELOCK: Of the Cape.

SPRAGUE: Cape Canaveral?

WHEELOCK: Yeah.

SPRAGUE: Okay. In the screens that you're talking about. Was it. Help me out with this. Was it a screen with a green dot on it or did it have like, a what did it look like?

WHEELOCK: Oh, it was like a radar screen. Okay. I don't know how else to describe it.

SPRAGUE: Did it have a big green like thing rotating on it and going around like an arm or.

WHEELOCK: I don't recall that. But the screen itself, I was get a blip and follow that. And that was the trajectory and that sort of thing.

SPRAGUE: Mm hmm.

WHEELOCK: And it left a white mark that I can follow on the screen. You know what? I would take note of everything that was happening on the screen. I would be taking shorthand notes on. So that's what I transcribed.

SPRAGUE: Was the radar that you were using, Was it dedicated just for that purpose or was it the base radar and you were using that as a resource? You know what I mean?

WHEELOCK: I don't recall. It must have been exclusively for that project because I don't recall using that radar for anything else. But. The. Saturn's flights and things like that. Yeah. So.

SPRAGUE: You know, you had mentioned the Discovery project. Mm hmm. I wasn't I was perplexed. I wasn't able to find much on the Discovery project.

WHEELOCK: You know, they they didn't they didn't do a whole lot.

SPRAGUE: Okay?

WHEELOCK: It it it was basically the Saturn project that got all of the work, and I. Yeah.

SPRAGUE: So did you have any experiences with the Atlas project?

WHEELOCK: I did not.

SPRAGUE: Okay.

WHEELOCK: No.

SPRAGUE: Okay. So when you're transcribing to from the monitor, is that trajectory altitude or what kind of information is that? Just curious.

WHEELOCK: Pretty much all of that. Okay. You know, because you have to write it down and all. So, yeah, you had to monitor the height, the altitude and the pattern of the orbit and that sort of thing. Yeah.

SPRAGUE: And who did that information go to?

WHEELOCK: And when I would get done with the tracking and the site. I would take all of my notes up to my office, and then I would transcribe the shorthand into a typed report. I would show it to the sergeant in the office. He okayed it. Then I would take it in to the colonel's office. He would read it. And then if he agreed with everything I typed, he would stamp it. Top secret.

SPRAGUE: Do you remember the sergeant in the colonel's name by chance?

WHEELOCK: My colonel's name was our biggest concern. And the sergeant's name was Sergeant Self. But I cannot remember his first name.

SPRAGUE: I think you said in the pre-interview maybe William. Maybe. Or that.

WHEELOCK: I know that doesn't. I don't recall. I right now, I don't remember that. It could be.

SPRAGUE: And so forth.

WHEELOCK: Or Bill William. Yeah. Yeah.

SPRAGUE: S e l f self like self.

WHEELOCK: Yeah.

SPRAGUE: And then how do you spell Arbogast?

WHEELOCK: 00arbgust. I believe Arbogast.

SPRAGUE: Uh huh. And was he a lieutenant colonel or a full colonel?

WHEELOCK: I'm. I'm trying to remember that. I. I thought he was a full colonel.

SPRAGUE: Okay. Some of you had mentioned here your top secret clearance. What do you remember any of the specifics of? Usually when they give you a clearance, they do a background investigation.

WHEELOCK: Yeah. They had a lot of FBI checking me out. My parents, my grandparents, my aunts, my uncles. They went through my old neighborhood and interviewed a lot of the kids I grew up with in the neighborhood. Yeah, everybody thought I had gotten into some very bad trouble in Florida when the FBI started showing up on their front door doorstep asking questions about me. So but then I called my folks and told her what might be happening. And my dad said, it's already happened. We thought. Now, what did you get into? And but then I explained it to them and what it was all about. Then he was okay with that. But he said, yeah, they, they were it took about two weeks where they were questioning everybody that I had come in contact with. Okay.

SPRAGUE: So this sounds like a pretty from your description, you have yourself a staff sergeant, a colonel, and some guards. It doesn't sound like a large unit. Well.

WHEELOCK: It wasn't a real large unit, No. We had other people that were working at the monitors as well. There were always more than just one monitor going. You know, in case you missed something. The other monitor would maybe pick up the person and that monitor would pick it up, you know? So, yeah.

SPRAGUE: We were there were the other monitors where they. Men or women or both? Both.

WHEELOCK: Yeah. Mm hmm.

SPRAGUE: How did you learn shorthand for that job, or.

WHEELOCK: Did you learn shorthand in high school?

SPRAGUE: Okay. Yeah.

WHEELOCK: And typing and all of that.

SPRAGUE: Yeah. What were the conditions like working in this? Sounds like a concrete bunker.

WHEELOCK: It was basically that. A bunker? Yeah, Because whenever there would be a shoot, everything connected to the outside, like the phone lines would get shut off. We could not make phone calls out. We could not receive phone calls in when we were in a shoot in front of the monitor. And that. Yeah.

SPRAGUE: And by shoot, you mean a rocket going up at Cape Canaveral.

WHEELOCK: Because I'm sorry. What?

SPRAGUE: When you use the term shoot, you're talking about a rocket launcher.

WHEELOCK: Yeah. Yeah.

SPRAGUE: Okay. You had also mentioned carrying a 45 pistol. Yeah, totally.

WHEELOCK: I had to take the last case that was on my wrist out to the flight line with the description of the flight to the shoot that we had. The colonel would make sure I had a 45 on my hip, and I'd go up to an armed guard to an armed guard car that would then drive me out to the flight line to get on to a plane. And I would sit up front with the the crew, flight crew while the rest of the plane had TDY guides to fly up with us.

SPRAGUE: So you had a briefcase or.

WHEELOCK: Yeah, like satchel or a hard briefcase with the flight pattern. And all of the report was in that case.

SPRAGUE: And it was handcuffed to you or.

WHEELOCK: Handcuffed to my wrists? Yeah.

SPRAGUE: And so those that information, it's fascinating to hear about this. So instead of that being encrypted, you literally put it in a briefcase and carried it to whoever you were taking that information to.

WHEELOCK: We flew up to Andrews Air Force Base when I got off the plane. I was then taken into a highly guarded area, transferred the papers over to a person that took to the Pentagon. Oh.

SPRAGUE: Wow. And what. What plane did you fly up to? Andrews.

WHEELOCK: It was one of our military DC threes. C f you know, I call it a DC three. It was the size of a DC three.

SPRAGUE: Okay.

WHEELOCK: Yeah.

SPRAGUE: So you had talked about during the pre-interview about having to call your husband and say, I'm not going to be home. Oh. Tell us about that.

WHEELOCK: I wasn't able to do that. Yeah. When I got married in 59, this was in July of 59. We then got the place off base and it was kind of in a little bayou area of down the coast.

SPRAGUE: What town was that near?

WHEELOCK: I'm trying to remember how it just. I can't remember the name specifically right now, but my husband at that time then was out of the Air Force, but he was working on the base as well. He ran a thrift shop on the base. Plus, he then was hired by Westinghouse Corporation to work on the paperwork and the finance. So and of the 47 that they were working on. So that's what he was doing anyway. If we had a shoot going down, they would shut everything off. And I couldn't leave the building. I couldn't crawl out phone wise or anything like that to tell my husband that I was going to not be home, probably for supper. But I never had an opportunity to find out or tell him that in advance. So I'd be at work on base and all of a sudden we're getting locked down and I'm thinking, Oh boy. And there would be a time where it would be until the next day, midday, before I would get out and be able to get home. But he he I was thankful because he did understand what was going on and he had no soul. But it was just the idea.

SPRAGUE: Any special people you remember from working in that bunker that sticks out in your head?

WHEELOCK: Not offhand. I know Chuck Yeager used to sit in the test pilot back in the day. Well, he's the one that brought the sound barrier. He used to sit in the seats back where the gallery would sit to a map, and then we'd get some of the astronauts would come in. The original astronauts, they would maybe sit in during one of the shoots and that sort of thing. Trying to. I can't think. I'm trying to remember their names and I can't quite remember all of them. But I know Armstrong was in there once. I'm trying to think of the other ones, but I just right now, it just goes right over the top. Maybe they'll come. It'll come to me later.

SPRAGUE: So Neil Armstrong, Chuck Yeager, And they would come all the way across Florida to where you were at at England? Yeah. Was there was it? Well, I mean, that's all the way in the panhandle.

WHEELOCK: Yeah, I.

SPRAGUE: Know. And that's so your look. Is that so the radar can see the object easier because it's more distant or what is the, you know, the purpose behind that versus having a radar right at the Cape or something. And I'm trying to understand how.

WHEELOCK: I don't I, I don't quite know why they have that set up that way. I don't quite know that.

SPRAGUE: Okay.

WHEELOCK: It just was always there. Yeah.

SPRAGUE: So in addition to the other, having the astronauts who actually came to your bunker is what you're telling me.

WHEELOCK: On occasion they are. They would come and sit in with the with the staff major and the colonel and staff from headquarters would come over and sit down and. Yeah.

SPRAGUE: To remember the majors name by chance or not?

WHEELOCK: No, I do.

SPRAGUE: Okay. You also mentioned something else interesting. Tell us about Sam the monkey.

WHEELOCK: Oh, well, we. Our purpose was finally to get the monkey out of the spaceship, which, yes, we retired, Sam. So we got rid of Sam and started prepping and doing things to the satellites, to house a band and that sort of thing. Yeah.

SPRAGUE: But so did you actually track Sam the monkey as he went overhead or when he launched?

WHEELOCK: No, I didn't. And but when I started doing tracking, that's when they had retired.

SPRAGUE: So Sam was already gone.

WHEELOCK: He was retired. Okay. Yeah. So that's why I said we retired the monkey. Yeah.

SPRAGUE: Did you? And I'm just curious. This is kind of an administrative detail. Where were you? Did anything change for you? When the National Advisory Committee for Aeronautics in NACA became NASSR in October of 58? Did that have any bearing on your operations? Did it affect you at all?

WHEELOCK: I don't recall any super affects from that.

SPRAGUE: Okay, well, no problem. Just thought I'd ask.

WHEELOCK: Yeah. No, I don't recall having any issues.

SPRAGUE: Okay. So tell us, you had talked to us during the pre-interview about us, but tell us about your decision and why the circumstances of leaving getting out of the military.

WHEELOCK: Well, I like I said, I was working at the site. Things were going great. And then all of a sudden I got the word from headquarters that they wanted to ship me to Germany for a year and a half. So I said, okay, can I take my husband with me and my spouse? You know, he was already out of the Air Force at that time. And they said, No, I could not. And so I told them, I said, in that case, I don't want to go to Germany if I can't take my husband with me and I have to be over there for a year and half, I just got married. So my alternative was to leave the service, which is what I did. I told the parent, I said, Start filing my discharge papers because I don't want to go over there without my husband. So he started filing my paperwork. We waited and waited to get the word and wasn't hearing anything. And so finally, my husband, who he because he worked in headquarters in finance. And so he went into headquarters one day and he went up into the office. He knew where to go and who to talk to to see what's happened to my records. They said they couldn't find them. They were lost. Well, he left headquarters and he told me what had happened, that the stuff was lost and that then he got them thinking about it and he said, No, that's just not right. That's not work. So he went back over to headquarters. He went back into the office where they had records and that and he said, Let me look behind that filing cabinet. So the God let him look behind. Here was my records behind the filing cabinet. And then he found them and brought them out. He said, now, since we've found her records, start processing them. So then they did. Couple days later, I got my papers and it was a little weird.

SPRAGUE: Why? So what made you why did they wind up behind a file cabinet, I wonder?

WHEELOCK: They didn't want me to get out, I guess. I don't know.

SPRAGUE: What does that have to do with the You had mentioned because of your top secret clearance?

WHEELOCK: Could very well be the reason. Yes, I'm thinking it was because I would have carried that clearance overseas with me, you know, And I think they wanted to keep him because of that.

SPRAGUE: So I've got to ask if the situation had been reversed and your husband had stayed in with the top secret clearance and your skill set, and he was asking his spouse to come with him to Germany, do you think he would have been allowed to do that?

WHEELOCK: I believe so. Yes, I do.

SPRAGUE: Okay. If the Army or sorry Air Force had allowed you to take your spouse, do you think you would have stayed in in the military or you would have still gotten out?

WHEELOCK: If I could have taken my spouse with me overseas, I would have stayed in and I would have continued with the military. Yes. Yes.

SPRAGUE: Okay. You had mentioned in the pre-interview that you and your husband worked across from each other on the base, or was it nearby each other? Ah, not so much, because he was working on the B 47 and you were in the boondocks.

WHEELOCK: When I first met my husband, he was still in the military. He was working in headquarters on the main base. When he got out and he got out because that was back in the day when the military froze your rate and pay grade. And they wouldn't they wouldn't give him an increase in his grade or pay rate. And that's why he then got out. Then Westinghouse asked him to go to work for them on the B 47 project. But I was still in the military at that time. Yeah. And I was working out at the side.

SPRAGUE: So when you got out, got out of the military, what what happened next?

WHEELOCK: Well, we packed everything up. I packed all of my military stuff up and put it in my big B four bag and. There wasn't room in our little bitty Chevy that we had. So I said, Well, that's okay. I'll just put all my uniforms and shoes and stuff in my before rolled up nice and tight and everything, and I'll just ship it to my folks house up there. Well, they had then moved from Flint to Carlisle, Michigan, and I would ship it up to a bishop airport where they can go pick it up. Well. It didn't get up there. Didn't get up there. And I called Delta, which is the airline that I put the bag on to be sent to Michigan. I said, Do you have my bag? And I gave my military number that was on the bag and everything and described it. They said, no, we can't find it. I said, I gave it to you, paid shipping charges and everything for you to ship it to the airport up in Flint. And they said, we can't find that. So Delta lost my b4 bag and all my uniforms and everything.

SPRAGUE: No, no.

WHEELOCK: And I kept after them for a couple of years after the fact to see if maybe, just maybe somebody found it and brought it up, you know. But no, they never did. I never did find it. By then. We drove from Florida up to Wisconsin, and when I got to Wisconsin, we came through Manitowoc. And I told Don, I said, you know, this is a town I would love to move to. I said, It's near the water. We've got the boat to go across to go see my dad. We went up 42 to Door County where his folks were living because he was from Ephraim. I said, this is an ideal spot. So I said, I sure wish you would try to get a job in Manitowoc. Well, lo and behold, he did. He found an opening in Prairie Supply and Claudia Lee, when down, walked in. He talked to Clyde, only one of the owners of Rogers Supply, and they hired him right on the spot because of his. Office abilities and that sort of thing, and management, which is what we did in the military. So it was ideal for him. Yeah. Yeah. So then that's when we moved to Manitowoc then.

SPRAGUE: And what year was that?

WHEELOCK: We moved to Manitowoc the 1st of January in 1960. Okay. First week in January. Yeah, he had already started working at Rutgers and then he found a little apartment up on 19th Street. And then. He would go to the apartment and then on the weekends he would come up to the door, pony up to eat from where I was staying with his folks for the first couple of weeks.

SPRAGUE: For someone who's not from Manitowoc, how do you spell raas.

WHEELOCK: R a h r s.

SPRAGUE: Raas ra supply?

WHEELOCK: And they were also connected to the furniture store that was on 10th Street. Yeah.

SPRAGUE: Okay. Did you keep in contact with anyone by chance who had served with you in the military other than your husband?

WHEELOCK: I did not. I had my telephone numbers and addresses and all that in my before big of. Our best man who was a military police and my maid of honor was his wife. And she was also in the Air Force. Betty was her first name. I'm trying to think and she was from New Jersey, but that's as far as I could get, because I lost her all her address, my address book for the people like that. That was all it might be for.

SPRAGUE: You said her name was Betty.

WHEELOCK: Betty was her first name.

SPRAGUE: Okay.

WHEELOCK: I'm trying to think of the last name. Oh, God. I can't think of it. Betty and. I'm trying to think of his first name, and it just went right out the window. Betty and Phil or something like that.

SPRAGUE: Okay. No, no problem. No worries. Yeah. So what? What? When you left the military, you get up to Manitowoc. What did you next do in your career?

WHEELOCK: Well.

SPRAGUE: What's our next step?

WHEELOCK: After we got up to Manitowoc, then I met a girl, and she wanted to learn first aid. And there happened to be a first aid course just starting in Manitowoc. So her and I went to sign up, and the nurse that was giving the first aid treatments and schooling to us was Mrs. Campbell. And I remember her and she this was in. This was in 19. 64. Prior to that, I had my first child in Manitowoc at Holy Family. September 15th of 1969. She also had my close friend in Manitowoc had a child in I believe it was August, end of August of 1960. And then when I met her in 1964 or 63, actually, that's when we decided to take the first day of class. So her and I went first, first aid classes for, I don't know, three weeks or so. And it just intrigued me. And then Mrs. Campbell asked me if I would like a job, and I said, Doing what? She said, working in a hospital. I said, Well, yeah, I would. I wouldn't mind doing that. But I said, I'm not done with the course. She said, You don't need to finish this course. The director of nurses at Memorial Hospital wants you to come on board as is. I said, Well, okay. So I signed up at Memorial Hospital for O B Department on third shift. That was January of on January 2nd or something, January 4th of 1964. I signed up as a scrum nurse for the department and then also setting up all the instruments and everything for the doctors for delivery and handed over to the doctors as they needed them during the delivery. And that was on third shift. And I worked that for, oh, quite a couple of years for sure. And there were times when I was on call and if it was the winter and the snows that we would get off of that late, then we lived right over on Eldred Drive. We couldn't drive the car out because it was a Corvair. Back then, they were so low slung. You couldn't get through drifts. So I would put my cross-country skis on and I would ski across the back lots behind our house on Elder, across over to the Reed Avenue up and then ski up to the emergency entrance at the hospital. And they'd go in the emergency room door to get in and change my shoes and go upstairs, leave my skis on there. And yeah, so okay if I would get pulled in. Yeah.

SPRAGUE: Did you happen to have any involvement, obviously, with veterans organizations?

WHEELOCK: I did not after I got out. No, my husband did. He joined the AMVETS back in those days when they had when they started and that program in Manitowoc, he got involved with that and that was down well, just down the street here, not too far. That was post 32, I believe, and that's where he signed up. And then he also signed up with the Eagles Club. But see, back in those days, women didn't have the different organizations and things like that, you know? And if you were in the service, you didn't talk much about it, if at all. Because it just it just wasn't done back then.

SPRAGUE: That's going to be an interesting experience.

WHEELOCK: Yeah. Yeah.

SPRAGUE: Not being able to talk about it.

WHEELOCK: Well, after a while, you just kind of forget about it, you know? But yeah, that. That women just weren't. That accepted as veterans.

SPRAGUE: I do see that you do have the AMVETS 99 headgear on Garrison cap. So you're a member of that post? Is my guess. Correct. Tell me about that involvement.

WHEELOCK: Yeah. Yeah, I'm a trustee. A two year trustee of the AMVETS Post 99 now.

SPRAGUE: Yeah. Are there more women in the post or not? Or.

WHEELOCK: We had a female, but she's not coming to the meetings anymore. I don't know why, but yes, there are a quite a few women starting to come into the club. They haven't necessarily joined it as a name that member, but we're working on them. Okay. Trying to get them to come over. Yeah.

SPRAGUE: So what do you think your life would have been like if you had served?

WHEELOCK: I quite honestly don't know. I just. I never thought of anything else but the military. Since I was eight, seven, eight years old. That just was what I was going to do. And so I did it. You know, I was just it was like a one track mind when I did for for a little while. When I got finally discharged from the Air Force, I worked for a while in Fort Walton Beach, the city and I started up an office and files and stuff like that and hired people for this corporation out of Kearny, California. And it was like a supply chain business for the military and for Nassau. And so I got things set up and their paperwork and everything like that before I left Florida. So I was busy getting that all started up for them. Then I got a call from the head of the corporation, and clearly he wanted me to move out there when I got out of the military and become his private secretary. But I said, No, I'm moving to Wisconsin. So yeah.

SPRAGUE: Okay. And what motivated you to to do this interview? Why did you want to do this interview? Oh.

WHEELOCK: I just thought it was the right thing to do. You know? And Ashley Schmidt and I talked about it and she said, I really admire that young girl. She's quite something special. And so I thought, yeah, I wanted to help her out and that sort of thing. So.

SPRAGUE: Okay. Did we miss anything that you'd like to cover during this interview?

WHEELOCK: I can't think of anything off right away. Hundred thousand things will probably come to me in the middle of the night. Do you have a phone? No. No, I'm good. Loved. But, yeah, I just. I can't often think of anything right now. I know a little fun thing. When I was down in Detroit getting ready to get into the military and physical and all of that that you have to go through before they fly to basic training. When I first got down to Detroit, they checked me out and they said I didn't weigh enough to get into the military. I weighed at that time, I think, probably 98 to £100, £102, somewhere around there. Well, they said I had to wait at least 108 in order to pass the weight preference in sign up. So I went to this restaurant and that they had done bass play. And I sat there for, I don't know how long drinking malted milks. And I, I can't tell you how many malted milks I had. But when I went to weigh in later that day, I weighed £108.

SPRAGUE: Wow.

WHEELOCK: I haven't had a watered milk since. Yeah. So.

SPRAGUE: Okay. Well.

WHEELOCK: That's the extent I had to go through to get to 280, you know, to get out of the military. Yeah.

SPRAGUE: Quite the story.

WHEELOCK: Oh, dear. Yeah.

SPRAGUE: Okay, then we'll go ahead and wrap up the interview.

WHEELOCK: Okay.

SPRAGUE: Thank you for your service.

WHEELOCK: It was my pleasure. Yeah.

[Interview Ends]