The four koch brothers. Culminates in a boardroom showdown that charles ends up boarding. Some ofederick, and shareholders were essentially trying to expand the size of the board. It could have ended up deposing charles as chairman and they would have taken a greater role in the direction of the company. The end result is bill is tossed out of the company. By his brothers. By his brothers. There is a really dramatic moments in the book where the board has to sit down and decide if bill stays. Wichita author Daniel Schulman sunday night at 8 p. M. Eastern on q a. Hill insit prospect jackson. Hill was founded by a revolutionary war veteran from south carolina. When he realized he was going to die and the slaves would end up being sold or would become common slaves, he wrote in his will that at the time of his daughters death, the plantation would be sold and the money be used to pay the way for them to emigrate to liberia where a freed slave colony had been established. They call it repatriation, and they talk about going back to africa. But you have to understand, these people, they were americans. 4,y had been your fourth 3, five generations. It was not like they were going home. They were going back to the consonants their ancestors to the continent their ancestors originally inhabited. Was quite a risk. So, they took their culture, what they knew here, there. Theourse, some of them took bad aspects, too. Slavery was all they had ever known. They built houses like this one. After all, they are the ones who look this house. There are a lot of basically greek revival houses the slaves built in mississippi and africa. And across the river was the louisiana in liberia, which was settled by freed slaves from louisiana. There was a georgia, kentucky, and maryland county. All of those people came from those states in the u. S. The history and literary life of jackson, mississippi next weekend on cspans book to be an American History tv on cspan3. Set both the Dwight D Eisenhower residential laboratory using a president ial library and museum hosted several events to commemorate the dday invasion of nazioccupied france. Coming up, stories from the ii. Front during world war wives and children talk about schoolsetters, howell engaged in the war, and their memories of earl harper, dday, and president roosevelts death. Pearl harbor, dday, and president roosevelts death. This is about 40 minutes. In his book, the late historian john keegan writes, the Second World War is the largest event in human history, fought across Six Continents and all its oceans. It left hundreds of millions wounded, killed 100 18 million human beings, and materially devastated much of the heartland of human civilization. Ins affected life here abilene as well as in communities around the world where our panelists were during the war. I will begin our introductions with march olson. Marge spent the war, part of the war in texas and oklahoma. She followed her husband from post to post. They spent time in our relic, texas, that i know we will talk about. Snyder. Our panel were doris snyder. Doris is the mother of our snyder. Urator, william that has made the panel a real Family Affair as you will see in a moment. Skipping down to the end of the bob was a boy in western oklahoma. Went on to oklahoma a m, now of course Oklahoma State university, where he studied journalism. He met his wife and they married in 1955. The blessed event, also known as my birth, occurred four years later. [laughter] please welcome our panelists. [applause] i would like to start just by asking about a key date in history, december 7, 1941. Doris,arting with you, and then proceeding down the panel. Where were you, what were you doing, what was your reaction to the news . What was the first noticeable change in your life . Was working at the Firestone Tire and Rubber Company that day. A lot. Y changed my life enlistedy husband had in the marine corps that very day. He felt it was the thing to do. Without asking me. [laughter] was the thing to do. No disrespect to eisenhower, he did not want to be in the army. He thought he could get what he wanted if he enlisted ahead of time. He enlisted in the marine corps. Believe it or not, he and listed in cleveland, ohio, and they never even let him return home. They sent him directly to san diego that very minute. He did not have a toothbrush, get to say goodbye to his parents or nothing. Or to me. Of course, we were not married at the time. We were engaged. Yes. To meat is what happened on pearl harbor day. I was working at firestone. I was not exactly rosie the river there. Firestone, in order to accommodate us, they built on the huts right factory grounds. I was not in the main plant. I was in this quonset hut. In the bottom of the quonset hut, they were building wings, just wings, for the curtiss planes in the war. I was working on the second floor. No airconditioning. Believe me, it was warm. But we knew we had a job to do, so we did it. A man was sent down from new york to train me to operate this a typewriters like keyboard. It was about four feet long. Believe it or not, it paid the bills and ordered the materials planes onto build the this machine. It may be checks and kept the accounts right on this machine. I guess it was the nearest thing we had to a computer back in those days. And that was my pearl harbor day in a nutshell. I guess. Thank you. March, how about you . , how about you . If we could move the microphone to marge. Ok, i was a new bride. We had been married for three months. Right here in abilene. Supposedly happily ever after. The radio was on. Remember definitely hearing president roosevelt tell us about pearl harbor, and i knew then it was going to change my life. A fewly, within just short months, my husband did and ifor the service, became not only a war bride, but eventually i did become rosie time inter for a short our relic, texas. It definitely changed our lives. In amarillo, texas. It definitely changed our lives. Your experience was a little different as children when the war broke out. What are your memories of december 7 and your parents reactions . Me, since my birthday was the next day, my sixth birthday, i probably did not appreciate all that attention to pearl harbor. But it impacted it, because i had three older brothers. It was something my family was very aware of the significance. It was a big deal. I was planting a flower bed in the front yard, digging. Mother came out and told me the japanese had attacked. It sort of registered as a big thing, but it got even bigger because dad was preparing a christmas lighting decoration for our house. Ordered it toent become a v for victory. He asked me whether the morse code signal for victory was three dots and 8 or three dashes and a dot. We won an award. And i the came a war profiteer. [laughter] reminds me something really interesting i did not learn until really recently. During the war, the bbc used the opening refrain of beethovens fifth hash subversively using the german composer to signify victory in europe. And 1945, women in the workforce increased by more than 50 . In fact nearly half of all american women took some kind of job up during world war ii. It was not just defense work. Women moved into all sorts of new fields because of the male labor shortage. Now driving taxis, checking and stocking groceries, selling mens clothes, working as soda jerks, managing Department Stores and fixing flat tires. It was really a revolution in the type of work women did. Back withwill start you if you want to tell us more about some of the war work you did in amarillo where this article was written. It was the first place we moved after basic training in wichita falls, and the first thing i had to do, of course, was get a job. I worked in a warehouse for a short time. Then i learned that they were brides especially war brides, because they figured they would be better workers for amarillo,e plants in texas. Something i never dreamed i would ever do, and i cant believe i did it, but i climbed in eightfoot ladder with a blowtorch in one hand and a rule slider in the other hand and small pipesup of together to make one large pipe for helium. Experience. T of my i had other experiences there. That was one thing it shocks me today to think that i did it. [laughter] know youve followed mr. Olson around during the war. Some of the other jobs you took on, not even defense work maybe jobs men wouldve had during peacetime . In amarillo, the first job i had in amarillo, it was in a warehouse. And i had to push almost like a grocery cart around. Fill orders. Learn in a short time where everything was on the shelves. It was so many miscellaneous things, and i had to devise some way of knowing where they were. So, i did that. Then in Oklahoma City i do not know that men were doing it, but i did work for Western Union running branches through the city. A special one that comes to the mind that might have been on the dangerous side i worked at the stockyards. And i had to take a commuter train to the stockyards. Handled quite a bit of money. And here i was, 21, 22, getting on that commuter about 5 00 in moneyening with my bag of a lot of money. Riding a commuter train into the main office. Never dreamed they could have been dangerous. Im not sure it was all that dangerous back there, but i sure would not try it now. [laughter] , you told us about your early work with that interesting early computer. What about your other jobs . It. Hat was about that was about it . Until my husband came back. Then we were stationed at camp lejeune, North Carolina, because he got to come home early from the South Pacific because he had in two of the worst battles. E had been at aquatic and now they were the first to deploy into the water in japan. So, they needed r r. Absolutely. Experience with indifferent because both fathers were not of military age. How did the war change have twocause i had to younger sisters. She was a stay at home mom. My dad was a builder. Because we had moved from West Virginia when i was little to florida, to orlando. That was before there was any speaking mice or princesses. There was nothing there but orange groves and sand. My dad built a house for us there. And because he enjoyed holding he had work when we moved to ohio. We had experiences in florida. Because dad had heard there was so much work in ohio because we had four plants there at the time, akron was known as the River Capital of the world at that time, because we had good year, goodwrench, general, and firestone rubber plants there. And there was a lot of building there. City of up the whole firestone park. He built all of the homes there. It became his life work. Nd we did right well we had three regular meals a day, although we were raised through the depression. I dont remember ever being hungry. Yes. And everybody was kind of in the same boat. So, we did not know we werent privileged and had a lot of things. We thought we were so fortunate when we got an orange for christmas. Not all of this technology they have today. Yes. Well, mr. And mrs. Reeves, in terms of your homes in oklahoma and your fathers work and work your mother may have taken on during the war . For the electric company. Because of the war, they were very shorthanded, which meant they worked very long hours, which meant no vacations. We also ran a farm. Also worked awe farm, and addition to that, if small air force ace was built near our hometown, so we converted our Double Garage to an apartment at we rented to a pilot. Which meant a great deal to me because i hung up around him as much as possible to soak up all of the knowledge. We also have a large garden, as almost everyone did. My mom spent a lot of time working on that. Of the not work outside home. My brother and ive managed to keep her fully occupied more than she wanted, im sure. There were five of us. I am the baby. Which i like to tell them all the time, of course. My youngest brother did going to the service and my sisters husband and dad tried to. They told him he was war valuable on the homefront. He was also in the electric is this. We had the Victory Gardens. We collected scrap iron. I remember going without bubblegum. You are a biggie when very little. Fearlessly,r worked and she was a volunteer in many aspects of the homefront, and in therted a uso Center Little town where we lived. About 3000 population. It was an army camp oh, 40 miles south of us in texas. Boys, theided the soldiers, mostly boys, were coming up on the train and looking for someplace when they had free time to get away from cap. So she decide from camp. So she decided they had to have a good place. She talked to a lady you owned a lot of property and was a recluse in our little town, and she talked her into letting them use a building downtown. And she managed to talk, i guess everybody into furnishing doughnuts and coffee and , and girlsnd a piano to help and mothers in magazines and books and whatever it took to give the boy a place to go. Our performance area. I got to play the pnr. Could play home on the range with two fingers. I knew i must be glamorous and important to the war effort. The Victory Gardens and the uso you bring up are synonymous the the home front during war effort. Solid strives, blood drives, Civil Defense drills, of course the Victory Gardens. What memories to those activities raise of the wartime shortages i know children had trouble getting tires for their bicycles. One of my most frightening moments came as a result of that. When i was in the fourth grade, if we brought a pound of copper, glass, or bronze to school, we got a free movie ticket. The movie involved a mummy that rose out of the swamp at midnight and dragged his foot on his way to consume various victims. D home in the fog and i was pursued by the mommy every inch of the way and it was all because of that stupid war. [laughter] hard tois going to be top. [laughter] what are our dday memories . News . D you hear the where were you . What was the reaction to the news . Hope . One of anything come to mind . Of course i was working at firestone and we all heard that d day was happening and all of the churches were open. So what i planned to do on my way home from work, i stopped at church, prayed for my husband. Marge. I remember that i at the time had taken my baby daughter and my husband was overseas and i was living on the farm with his folks and my sister lived about 25 miles away and she had three children and her husband was serving in the navy. I was so excited that day that i had my baby daughter with some clothes and pay playpen which was her bed. I picked up my sister and we e hours oft in the we the morning, we were going to celebrate some place. We thought it would be in chase county in the flint hills. The first thing we had was a flat tire and here we are and had to unpack kids and everything and it was still dark and we happened to be near a small town and so we went to the filling station and behind the filling station was the house. We knocked on the door and woke him up. The man was so happy when we told him it was dday and told him about it that he came out and took care of our tire. Otherwise i dont know how long we would have been stranded. How about meanwhile in oklahoma . It took a while for the word to get there. [laughter] the key dates i really remember were Jimmy Doolittles raid and the atomic bomb and the day president roosevelt died. I was 12 when he died and he was the only president we had had during my lifetime. That was really one of the big moments of the war and i remember dday and being fascinated by it but it wasnt one of those do you remember what you were doing when kinds of days in my life. And sort of the same for me and the day that roosevelt died was, i do remember, april 12, 1945 because we also had a tornado that about took most of the little town that i lived in away. So that probably took a little more significance to us and, also, i had well, i dont think i want to tell that. [laughter] well talk later. Another question, since you two are both still in school, in grade school, did the war, was there a daily effect of the war . Was it constantly on peoples minds . Im sure they had siblings and parents involved in the war. How big of a presence was the war in your daily life at school . It was huge. The teachers always posted war happenings, we learned a lot of geography because of the war and learned about other countries. They sold stamps for buying victory bonds each monday morning at school. You could buy one either for a dime or a quarter. We had scrap drives through the school. One of the popular pasttimes was for kids to bring war trophies that their brothers or fathers sent to them, german helmets, japanese helmets and thinking of todays life, rifles, pistols, and all kinds of weapons showed up on a regular basis in grade school, but these were great moments and we passed them around for show and tell. [laughter] well, i had letters, of course, i wrote to the brother and i wrote to and they wrote to me and still have some of those so that was something that was very appreciated and rereading them now, it just takes you back. I mean youre transported back when you read those letters and they loved everything that we would send. I must say, we were good about it, everybody wrote and everybody was a part. That war touched everybody, everybody you knew. We were together for lunch as a panel together to get our thoughts together as best we could. You shared one item i thought was really interesting. It was from an organization of a red cross chapter in a very small town in oklahoma raising money for the war effort and collecting items to help the allies. What really struck me is that its dated march 1941 rand so these small communities in southeastern oklahoma were already involved on the side of the allies to some extent well before pearl harbor which really came as kind of a surprise to me. Well, in the time we have left to kind of go full circle, we keep mentioning these key dates, there is victory in europe day, if there is any memory associated to that or more perhaps victory over japan day, more meaningful depending upon which theater your Family Member was in and any particular memories of those two key dates. Well, both v. E. Day and v. J. Day prompted impromptu parades down main street. Everybody who had a pickup or car was driving and honking, so it was a celebration clear in the middle of the country and obviously extremely well received. As the folk singer woody guthrie, the peace hit st. Louis a lot harder than the war ever did. Well, we have sometime for questions and answers of our panelists, but also just for you to be able to share your memories of the war as well and linda here will pass the microphone, please wait until you get the microphone so that the cameras will be able to pick up the audio. Being young during that time, in my studies at school when i was getting my p. H. D. , we talked to a lot of wives who lost their husbands in the current wars. What did the homefront, what did the men and women do when a friend of theirs or a neighbor got news that they actually lost a husband . Are you speaking to me . Anybody on the panel. I lost Three Friends in the war. One, his ship was bombed and split in half and he was asleep on the bottom deck at that point and the other one, jerrys plane was bombed and, of course, they were all killed on the plane. And then ben worked at firestone with me and i always felt so bad that he enlisted because he was all that his mother had. He had no reason to enlist. He wouldnt have had to, but he did anyway. And he was all she had and he didnt come home. I guess i was one of the lucky ones. My fiance came home and we got to be married and had three children. I guess thats one. Another question for the panel . Yes. This question is for mrs. Olson and mrs. Snyder. I heard the toughest job in the army is an army wife. How do you feel about that . It was what . The toughest job in the army is an army wife. Do you feel that is true . A marine wife. Or a marine wife. [laughter] right, marine. Lets see, when he got home, we were married in three weeks after he got home. The war was still going on, but he got to come home because of what he had been through, so thats why we were sent to camp lejeune. We lived there on base for, lets see, almost a year and almost two years i think we lived on base and it was one of the most fun times of my life. I could walk down to the ocean. I could walk to the grocery store. Even though we lived in what today they call a little travel trailer and thats what all the married marines lived in and i had to learn to cook on a little camp stove. I had to pump up a little keg on the front of it and we had some wonderful times. I made a lot of marine friends and families because the whole base was family mostly. We had some lifelong friends that we made there. So actually it was a nice experience. I enjoyed now today, i think North Carolina is my favorite state. This, my experience, the worst time of all that for years after my husband died in 1989, i had a recurrent dream that he was walking down a country lane to a mailbox and i would get there and there would be no letters. And this dream continued throughout the years until obviously maybe in the last 10 years and actually thats kind of what has happened. There were days, to me the lifeline was the communication and communication when our husbands were in the army were by letter. No telephones, no ipads, no cell phones, no pictures, nothing and then these letters at least coming from okinawa would come, maybe you would come down to the mailbox for two, three days in a row or maybe five days and then there would be no letters. The and then the next day there would be one. When he was sent overseas, he didnt know where he was headed. I didnt know where he was headed because they zigzagged across the pacific because of the japanese subs and it took about six weeks, he left the first part of june and didnt get into okanawa until the last of july and then it was another six weeks before i heard from him, so to me, communication was the hardest part and those were long, long months. Of course, i had a baby girl and i was busy, but still it was hard, very hard. I know thats why i continue to have a dream that referred to that time in my life. Were your letters all cut up . Mine were so censored, it was usually just dear doris and a salutation, so chopped up. I cant understand why the censors had to be so rough because my husband wasnt crazy enough to tell where he was to the enemy, why did they chop them all up like that . I think they enjoyed it. [laughter] no, in answer to your question, mine werent cut up. They werent . But my husband never wrote very much about what was going on except the discomfort of the rain and the mud that he was living in on okinawa. But after he was dead probably about at least 10 years, i was going through his things and the first part of the diary showed nothing, so i was ready to toss it. And flipping back through, i came to the middle of the diary, he had started it when he left, not in front of the diary. And in this diary, i learned about the snipers, the booby trap that he barely escaped, the strafing of his tenants, his homesickness, of the 170mile typhoon and all of those things that he didnt write because he didnt want me to be upset. A treasure. Mrs. Rives, you mentioned that the war was something that everyone felt, was involved in and being a spouse from the war today where its 1 or 2 that feels the cost of the last war, do you have any suggestions on how we can help civilians understand that there is still that cost . Actually a group of ladies at our church who this kind of thing keeps it foremost in your mind, we have made greeting cards to send to the military so that they would have cards to send home to people. It is something that when you work on it and you talk about it, you become very aware that these things are still going on, there are Lonely People out there and it gets, it also encourages them beyond, i know the email and all of that stuff, but you know, those letters that you have in your hand that i still have from my brothers in the 1940s mean a lot. I think generally you know talking about it and encouraging that kind of involvement because it does, it means a tremendous amount and it did, it was mentioned early, you know, when you live in a little town, you do lose people that you know very well. I think everybody kind of huddles together. You try to support each other and youre aware of everything that is going on in the lives. You have to put yourself there. Another question . I want to say that i was in the army and when it was mail time, it was a big deal. I think that the email and all that stuff is detrimental to the military because just think of all the times that you could write a letter and those soldiers would get that letter and be really thrilled. I think that there needs to be a campaign of writing letters instead of all of these emails because they can keep those letters. They cant keep the emails, theyre in space. Letters are tangible. And reread them. Years and years from now, those soldiers can read them and think back, it is very necessary for people to write letters. At 5 00, a booth will open by the statue where you can make a card to send a current soldier. We have time for one more question. One more. What effect or what memories do you have from the ragsing from the rationing that went on during world war ii . I know my mother has talked about it briefly, but she doesnt talk very much about those memories. As kids, we didnt notice it so much except for a shortage of bubble gum