June 2015
Compiled by Pat Garber

Editor’s note: This is a three-part series, look for the last in­stallment in the July Issue.

Having made her de­cision to leave rural Minnesota and see what big city life was like, Eleanor lived with several different families in the Min­neapolis-St. Paul area, doing housekeeping and child care. She then found work more to her liking at the Travelers In­surance Company.

I rode an elevator to my of­fice, where I could look out the window and see the boats and ships going down the Missis­sippi River.

After three years, she took a train to San Francisco to visit a friend and decided to stay. So she wired back to her boss that she would not be returning. In San Francisco she found room and board on California Street and a job at Johnson & Higgins, Marine Insurance Brokers, tak­ing a cable car about 20 blocks to and from work.

I was in San Francisco in 1941 when Pearl Harbor was bombed. A friend and I had driven down to Palo Alto and we noticed a lot of airplane activity around Moffet Field, a military airfield. There seemed to be a lot of excitement, but it wasn’t until we got back home that we learned what had hap­pened. I remember blackouts at night. Defense officials re­quired that all lights be turned out after dark as they were concerned about submarine at­tacks by the Japanese.

During World War II, Elea­nor decided to travel farther afield.

I flew from San Francisco to the Panama Canal Zone. Uncle Ray met me at the air­port in Panama, picked up my luggage, went out for his car and it was gone (stolen). It was found by the Panamanian po­lice several days later.

Eleanor moved into a work­ing women’s dormitory on the Pacific Ocean side of Panama which, due to pests, was some­times referred to as “Termite Terrace.”

We could stand on the deck and watch monkeys. There were many interesting wom­en from all over the United States there and I became good friends with about six of them.

She obtained a job with the U.S. government, keeping re­cords of school supplies in a big administration building in Balboa Heights. She re­members that she could look down through the windows and see ships go­ing through the canal and planes taking off and land­ing. She also had time to take trips and explore some of the area.

I recall going with my boss to a leper colony, about 10 miles away, in the government car. I saw some sad looking charac­ters. There was no cure for leprosy then. There were at least 25 men and women, crippled and disfigured.

On another occasion she took a boat trip down to San Blas Island where a very prim­itive group of Indians lived.

As soon as we landed we were taken to a dining hall for our noon meal. The big surprise for me was seeing a big turtle on a platter sitting in the middle of the table. I don’t remember sampling it but I reckon I did.

For recreation, Eleanor and her friends went to USO danc­es. The Army and the Navy sent their recreation directors to find young women who would enjoy coming to these affairs.

I danced with lots of military men; I remember the foxtrot and waltz.

She recalls hearing Elea­nor Roosevelt speak at a USO gathering. I had gone to the dance with an army captain. We did not know Eleanor Roo­sevelt was going to be there. So it was a big surprise. I always was an admirer of hers.

Eleanor stayed in Panama for about three years. While there, she also took time from her job to visit Colombia, Ecuador and Peru. Traveling alone, she recalls often arriving at places without lodging reservations and having quite a few adven­tures, too numerous to record here.

The war in Europe ended in May 1945, but the troops could not yet go home.

We witnessed hundreds of troops at the airplane hangar on their way to more fighting. After the nuclear bombs were dropped, the war in the Pacific was soon over. My husband-to-be (Willard “Jake” Garrish) told me later that he was on a ship anchored near the battle­ship Missouri where the sur­render documents between Ja­pan and the Allies were signed.

With the war over, Eleanor decided it was time to return home. She got passage on a Navy transport, stopping overnight at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, on the way to New York City. After years in the tropics, she remembers how cold and windy it was in the Big Apple.

I had no room reserva­tions, and it was hard to get hotel rooms. A very kind lady I’d met on the transport in­vited me to stay with her till I could get a room. I spent about a week doing the usual sightseeing before returning to Minnesota, unsure of where

May 2015
Compiled by Pat Garber

Editor’s note: This is a three-part series, look for the next in­stallment in the June issue.

Part I: Growing up in Minnesota

Earlier this year, Eleanor Garrish, Ocracoke’s well-loved quilter and OPS volunteer, turned 98.

Nearly 40 of those years she spent at Ocracoke, which be­came very much her home.

Before that, however, she led quite a different life, growing up on a farm in Minnesota, set­ting out to see the world on her own, and falling in love with an Ocracoke sailor in far-away Hawaii.

Last year I assisted her in writing her story, and this is a much-condensed version.

It seems as though I wasn’t called upon to talk about my life until I retired and moved down here, to Ocracoke. I was asked to talk about my experi­ences by family and friends, and sometimes tourists would ask me.

Eleanor’s parents were of English and German descent. They owned a small farm where they raised cattle, hors­es, sheep, and chickens, along with the crops to feed them and vegetables.

I was born in Janu­ary of 1916 at home in Nobles County, Minnesota, during a snowstorm. My father went to the neighbors in a horse-drawn sled to telephone the doc­tor to come or give instructions for child­birth. My father came back home and I was born soon after. I don’t know if the doc­tor ever got there, or who delivered me.

Eleanor was the el­dest of five children, one boy and four girls. She and her younger sister walked to the one-room rural schoolhouse, a third of a mile away. They helped with all the farm work, storing their food in an ice house.

I was called upon to use horse-drawn equipment, such as a drag and a cultivator. I used a team of horses and went over the fields, up and down and back and forth, row after row, to slow down the weeds. There were cows to get in from the pasture and then milk ev­ery morning and evening, and I often assisted in doing that. We had a flock of chickens for an egg supply and for fried chicken to eat occasionally. We children took a turn collecting the eggs daily.

Eleanor remembers the Dust Bowl of the ‘30’s, when dust would blow all the way from Kansas into Minne­sota, and dust was ev­erywhere.

My father did a spe­cial kind of plowing to keep the dust down.

During junior and high school, Eleanor stayed with her moth­er’s parents, where she studied book­keeping, typing and shorthand.

I played basketball with the high school team and I was jump­ing center for a while, as I was considered tall.

She graduated from high school in 1932, at age 16, along with 31 other students.

As a graduation present, my Uncle Ray and Aunt Marge in­vited me to go with them to the World’s Fair in Chicago. We left from Sioux City, Iowa, and there was a car packed full of us.

She then attended one year of “Normal School,” which pre­pared her to be a teacher. Those were Depression days, but she says she didn’t really know it at the time.

At the age of 17, I got a job teaching in a one-room school­house with an enrollment of about 12 students, aged eight to 12. I got room and board for one year, one and a half miles from school, which I walked every day. My begin­ning salary was $45 a month. The school had a furnace that burned wood and coal and it was my responsibility to keep the school warm. I would bank up the fire at night before I left so it wouldn’t go out. One sixth-grader rode a horse to school and the others walked.

Eleanor later taught at an­other school for two years, be­fore the lure of change drew me away. I wanted to find out what life in the big city was like.