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Oral History Center University of California The Bancroft Library Berkeley, California

Olga Byrd

Rosie the Riveter WWII Home Front Oral History Project

This interview series was funded in part by a contract with the National Park Service, and with the support of individual donors.

Interview conducted by David Dunham in 2010

Copyright © 2016 by The Regents of the University of California Oral History Center, The Bancroft Library, University of California, Berkeley ii

Since 1954 the Oral History Center of The Bancroft Library, formerly the Regional Oral History Office, has been interviewing leading participants in or well-placed witnesses to major events in the development of Northern California, the West, and the nation. Oral History is a method of collecting historical information through recorded interviews between a narrator with firsthand knowledge of historically significant events and a well-informed interviewer, with the goal of preserving substantive additions to the historical record. The recording is transcribed, lightly edited for continuity and clarity, and reviewed by the interviewee. The corrected manuscript is bound with photographs and illustrative materials and placed in The Bancroft Library at the University of California, Berkeley, and in other research collections for scholarly use. Because it is primary material, oral history is not intended to present the final, verified, or complete narrative of events. It is a spoken account, offered by the interviewee in response to questioning, and as such it is reflective, partisan, deeply involved, and irreplaceable.

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All uses of this manuscript are covered by a legal agreement between The Regents of the University of California and Olga Byrd, dated August 17, 2010. The manuscript is thereby made available for research purposes. All literary rights in the manuscript, including the right to publish, are reserved to The Bancroft Library of the University of California, Berkeley. Excerpts up to 1,000 words from this interview may be quoted for publication without seeking permission as long as the use is non-commercial and properly cited.

Requests for permission to quote for publication should be addressed to The Bancroft Library, Head of Public Services, Mail Code 6000, University of California, Berkeley, 94720-6000, and should follow instructions available online at http://ucblib.link/OHC-rights.

It is recommended that this oral history be cited as follows:

Olga Byrd, “Rosie the Riveter, WWII Home Front Oral History Project” conducted by David Dunham in 2010, Regional Oral History Office, The Bancroft Library, University of California, Berkeley, 2016.

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Olga Byrd

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Table of Contents

Interview 1: August 17, 2010

Hour 1 1

Family background — Impact of Depression on parents — Elementary school experiences — First job at a candy shop in 7th Grade — Attending Balboa High School — Girls Athletic Association —

Hour 2 27

Life in Berkeley and Albany — Commonwealth Club — Forming a women’s rights organization and Consumer advocacy group in Concord — Picketing a luncheon where Ralph Nader spoke — Backlash for political work — Attending college to study Public Administration — Port Chicago — Acheson Village — Comments on the increasing population of Richmond and San Francisco — Watching plays at the Marsh in the Mission District and the Berkeley Rep, Aurora, and Shotgun in Berkeley — Taking classes at Theater Exploration in Albany — The Red Oak at Richmond Harbor — Work on discriminatory housing cases with the Human Relations Advisory Committee in Concord during the 70s — Reflecting on training to become secretary to the UC Regents and quitting due to racism and elitism and the altering of minutes by the Regents — Retiring and working as a meeting planner for the Governor’s Conference in San Francisco, for a travel agency, and the Contra Costa County Mayor’s Conference — On staying busy after retirement.

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Interview 1: August 17, 2010

Dunham: Okay, I’m David Dunham, and I’m here today on August 17, 2010 with Olga Byrd as part of the Rosie the Riveter World War II Home front National Park Oral History Project, and so thank you for inviting me here today, glad we’re finally getting started. We usually start at the beginning, which is just a little about I guess where you were born and when, and a little about your family background, parents, grandparents, whatever you care to share.

1-00:00:39 Byrd: Okay, you want me to tell you that right now?

Dunham: Yeah, that’d be great.

1-00:00:39 Byrd: Okay. Well, I was born in San Francisco in 1925, November 27, 1925, and my grandparents on my father’s side of the family emigrated from Sicily around 1900 I believe it was. He was the youngest of eleven children and the only one born in the United States. On my mother’s side my grandfather emigrated from Norway, and he was actually a merchant seaman, I don’t know, the story goes that he jumped ship in San Francisco, but that’s never been authenticated, so I’m not sure. I really don’t know a whole lot about my ancestry other than it goes back about, I knew my great grandmother was an orphan in Palermo in Sicily. I don’t know how she got married or came here or what, I don’t know any of that.

Dunham: Your parents, then, where were they born?

1-00:01:56 Byrd: My father was born on Telegraph Hill in San Francisco right in the middle of the Italian district, and my mother was born in Berkeley, California, and only because my mother was about to be born when the big 1906 earthquake hit. My grandfather, having been a seaman, was able to find a way to transport people out of San Francisco to safety in Berkeley, including his pregnant wife. So my mother was born in Berkeley. Her mother died when she was fourteen, so she was raised then by her aunt in San Francisco.

Dunham: What year did you say you were born?

1-00:02:51 Byrd: I was born in 1925 in San Francisco, and I was also born on North Beach. Oh, dear, I lost the name of the street, but it was right up from St. Peter and Paul Church at Washington Square. Filbert Street.

Dunham: Is that where you lived when you were born?

1-00:03:16 Byrd: We did, yes. I was born at home, and my sister also was born at home, although we had then lived on Green Street, moved to Filbert when I was

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born, and then we moved out to the Mission district, and I don’t remember anything about having lived in North Beach.

Dunham: Where did you live in the Mission district?

1-00:03:38 Byrd: We lived at Holly Park Circle to begin with, which was in the Bernal Heights area, and then we moved to, not far, a block and a half to Highland Avenue, and I was raised in those places.

Dunham: Okay, and what are your earliest memories of that neighborhood?

1-00:03:55 Byrd: I remember playing in Holly Park, which was a big circle, with the park right in the middle of the circle. It had a hill; I can remember playing on the hillside and tried to learn how to play tennis and playing on the swings and that’s it. It was a nice neighborhood for children, a lot of freedom for children that we had other kids around us.

Dunham: How many siblings did you have?

1-00:04:30 Byrd: One, my older sister, eighteen months older, yeah.

Dunham: Eighteen months older. Okay, and how about your parents, what were their lives like?

1-00:04:37 Byrd: Oh, my father was a teamster; my mother was a housewife, never worked. My father worked all the way through the Depression. Prior to his being a teamster he worked at whatever he could get I suppose, but it seemed as though he was pretty good at getting jobs. We were never denied anything at all; we were very fortunate. From some of the stories I hear from my friends, we didn’t have any of that. We were very lucky.

Dunham: All right, and your neighborhood was primarily Italian?

1-00:05:19 Byrd: It was Italian, yes, primarily, I guess, and Irish, too; Irish and Italian.

Dunham: Did the Italians and Irish mix?

1-00:05:34 Byrd: Well, it was— Yeah, it was okay. I didn’t pay any attention. I didn’t notice any differences. I was just a kid playing.

Dunham: Yeah. What was your school experience like?

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1-00:05:50 Byrd: Well, I went to the usual grammar school right across the street where we lived on Holly Park Circle, it was just right across the street. Then when we moved to Highland Avenue I had to walk to school for the seventh and eighth grade. In fact, I got my first job when I was in seventh grade. I worked for fifteen minutes a day at the local candy store, at the corner candy store during lunch hour. I was paid ten cents a day, or I could take it out in candy or a hot dog or something. I said, “No, I don’t want to do that. I want to save it up, and you’d give me fifty cents at the end of the week.” And that’s what I did.

I just got in the habit of saving my money until I could buy something that I wanted.

Dunham: Wow.

1-00:06:45 Byrd: Started when I was in seventh grade.

Dunham: Do you remember the name of the candy shop?

1-00:06:46 Byrd: Oh, no. It was just the corner candy store, but the kids would come in at lunch break. They did have hot dogs, too, and soft drinks and that sort of thing. But my mother always packed my lunch.

Dunham: Then what year did you enter high school?

1-00:07:12 Byrd: I went into high school, oh, gosh, I’ve got to think back about the year, ’38 I guess, 1938, I spent three and a half years at Balboa, yeah. I went to Balboa High. We were right in between Balboa and Mission High Schools, and we had a choice as to which one we wanted to go to. My sister decided that we would go to Balboa, I don’t know why, but she did. So, of course, I followed her, I followed her everywhere. I went to high school for three and a half years, and I got out in December of ’42, so—

Dunham: What was high school like?

1-00:08:05 Byrd: Oh, it was great. High school was wonderful. I loved it. It was just wonderful. I like going to classes anyway, I still do. Also we had a very active social life in school. We went to all the games. We participated in all the sports. After school they had girls’ athletics sports.

Dunham: What sports did you play?

1-00:08:36 Byrd: Well, my sister forced me to do these things. Let me think. We played volleyball, and I remember that one really well. We did swim, too. We went

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up to Jefferson in Daly City to take their swimming classes after school. We did all of this for the GAA. It was called the Girls Athletic Association. According to my sister we had to be members of that, so I wasn’t as enthused about it as she was. I was more enthused to be at things that had to do with the school, within the school. I worked in the Vice Principal’s office always, and I was, of course, her name was Miss Polly, and I was her secretary. For one period a day I was in the Vice Principal’s office and that sort of thing. I liked that, but we joined all of the clubs, we were involved in all the outside activities. There were lots of after school activities—

Dunham: Like what were some of the activities?

1-00:09:47 Byrd: I knew you were going to ask me that. I remember that one in particular. There were several clubs that I, Hi-Lo club or something. Some of the clubs it was—

Dunham: What would that be, a Hi-Lo club?

1-00:09:59 Byrd: Prestigious to join, you had to be, oh, it’s terrible, now that I think of it. You had to be voted in. You had to be popular.

Dunham: So voted in by students.

1-00:10:09 Byrd: By the other kids.

Dunham: Okay. What did you do in the Hi-Lo club?

1-00:10:15 Byrd: That’s what I’m trying to remember.

Dunham: Okay, other than note your popularity.

1-00:10:19 Byrd: I would bring it up. I shouldn’t have brought it up.

Dunham: No, that’s quite all right. Did you have favorite teachers or classes?

1-00:10:28 Byrd: Yes, I did. I liked Shorthand very much, and a particular teacher who was the best Shorthand teacher there. English was my mainstay. I took everything that had anything to do with English, all literature classes. And I took Drama, and I took Public Speaking. We used to have a choice of some subjects. We had to take our core subjects, and then we had our choice to fill in the rest of the day. I always took something that had to do with English.

Dunham: Did you date in high school, or what was the—

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1-00:11:08 Byrd: My father wouldn’t let us date; he was Italian.

Dunham: Okay. That’s how it was, huh?

1-00:11:12 Byrd: That’s how it was. Our social activities outside of school, fortunately, we had joined the church, the local Catholic Church, and they had activities for young people. There was the young people’s club, and my sister and I were allowed in the club. The priest spoke up for us because you had to be either eighteen or graduated from high school to join this particular club. But he felt that we needed it because my father was so strict.

Dunham: Okay.

1-00:11:51 Byrd: He was Irish. So we did get to join the club, they let us in. We got to go to Friday night dances, and we went on excursions outside the city, during the day, all day Sunday. We came up to Walnut Creek, in fact, to go swimming at a place I can’t think of the name of where we barbecued and swam and danced and spent the whole day, and it was just wonderful. A whole, great group of us, we had a big, they rented a big truck and filled it with hay. We call it a hayride, we went on a hayride, and we all sat in the back of the truck. Then at night when we came home, they dropped the girls off each of them at their houses.

Dunham: It was an all girls’ club?

1-00:12:47 Byrd: No, it was boys and girls, no, no, no.

Dunham: It must have been some flirtations at least in that—

1-00:12:58 Byrd: Of course, boyfriend, girlfriend, that sort of thing. Oh,yes. One of the reasons the priest wanted us in the club was that we had no contacts like that.

Dunham: Okay.

1-00:13:09 Byrd: So thanks to him, we got to have a social life. It was okay with my father as long as it was in the church. As long it was the church.

Dunham: So courtesy of the church, did you have any boyfriends when you were in during that time?

1-00:13:23 Byrd: I didn’t have any steady boyfriends. Certain boys I would dance with, that sort of thing, but I didn’t have any steady boyfriends.

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Dunham: How about your sister, your older sister?

1-00:13:38 Byrd: Not in church, but she did have a boyfriend in high school, now that I think of it, and he was Irish, O’Rourke, yeah.

Dunham: Did your father know about him?

1-00:13:49 Byrd: No, I don’t think so. We couldn’t go out at night.

Dunham: What did you do at night with your family? Did you socialize with your family?

1-00:14:00 Byrd: No, we just did our homework. My sister liked to sew. She was and still is a very excellent seamstress, and she started very young. She went that way. She’s now a very renowned quilter. And I read books.

Dunham: What was your favorite book at the time?

1-00:14:30 Byrd: Oh, gee. Come on, that was too long ago.

Dunham: I was just trying to go there. Okay, don’t worry. Well, tell me a little—

1-00:14:39 Byrd: Dr. Doolittle.

Dunham: You told me a little earlier about you had that special opportunity to go pick tomatoes when you were in high school. When and how did that come about?

1-00:14:47 Byrd: Well, this is my first war effort you might say. I had really not thought about it as that until today. I’d forgotten about it. When I was going into my senior year in high school the Red Cross presented us with an invitation to take the place of some fruit pickers who had gone into the, since all the men who picked the fruits out in the ranches, outlying areas that I knew nothing about, being a city person, had all gone into the service, had all been drafted or gone into the Army or whatever. So there were no people left to pick fruit. So the Red Cross put together a program where we, if we wished to volunteer to pick fruit for two weeks, we would be able to get out of school for those two weeks. So my girlfriend and I decided that would be a lot of fun, and we would do it, and I’ve never worked so hard in my life. We picked tomatoes out I guess it was the Alameda County Fairgrounds. There was a race track. They bunked us underneath the race track, under the stairs or seating areas of the race track.

Dunham: Were all the girls from your school, or was it from all over.

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1-00:16:23 Byrd: No, just about five of us from all over, you had to be a senior, so about five of us who were the best of friends decided we would do it, and we did.

Dunham: Now was there a lot of spirit of sort of doing it relative to the war, or was it just getting out of school for a couple of weeks.

1-00:16:42 Byrd: It was just getting out of school. I have to be truthful, it was just, no, we just did it for a lark. Now that I look back on it, oh, we did help in the war.

Dunham: Was it hard work?

1-00:16:56 Byrd: VERY hard, very hard. My friends said, I remember one of them saying she’d never look at another tomato the rest of her life. But it didn’t affect me that way because I love tomatoes.

Dunham: So this was ’41 or ’42?

1-00:17:14 Byrd: This was in—

Dunham: ’43?

1-00:17:15 Byrd: No, no. I was out of school by ’43. This was in September of ’42.

Dunham: So what are your earliest memories of the war? Do you remember hearing about Pearl Harbor?

1-00:17:29 Byrd: Oh, of course. Yeah, oh, yeah. We were all glued to the radio. Of course, we heard FDR, everything. Yeah, we were pretty conscious, quite conscious of political situation, I guess, for our time and era. I guess my father might have talked about them, I don’t know, but I knew that I was aware, yeah.

Dunham: Were there ever any issues as Italian Americans about—

1-00:18:01 Byrd: No, actually, that was—

Dunham: Did you know of any other Italian families where it was an issue?

1-00:18:11 Byrd: No. In fact, I thought in more recent years that I was not aware of any racial issues at all during my childhood. I don’t know whether San Francisco was districts in such a way that, well, for instance, the Chinese stayed in Chinatown and that sort of thing. The black people were in the Fillmore

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district at that time, and they didn’t go out of the district. So we were all pretty much, neighborhoods were pretty either all white—

Dunham: Did you travel to those neighborhoods at all or not really?

1-00:18:49 Byrd: Well, not when I was a kid. Since then, yes.

Dunham: Sure. I think when we talked before you mentioned having one Mexican friend in the neighborhood?

1-00:18:58 Byrd: That’s what it was, yes. When I was in the seventh and eighth grades, one of, in fact, my very best friend was a little Mexican girl. But I didn’t think anything of it, just another one of the kids. Then when I look back upon it in later years I realize that she was all alone.

Dunham: She didn’t go on to Balboa with you? Did she go to Mission?

1-00:19:23 Byrd: No, she didn’t, no. I lost touch with her.

Dunham: What other things do you remember about the early part of the war while you were still in high school? Did you have classmates who were drafted and—

1-00:19:39 Byrd: I did, yes, indeed. Some of the boys went off, had volunteered because they could graduate earlier by doing that, and I graduated earlier, too, so actually when the war started I had not been in school that long. I’d only been in school for one year after the war. I can remember more once I was out of school, the lack of young men.

Dunham: Let’s face it.

1-00:20:16 Byrd: Really, but most of the time in high school during my senior year there were less boys in school, but all of our group, all of our friends were still in school. So it didn’t have that kind of social effect on us.

Dunham: What did you do when you graduated high school?

1-00:20:41 Byrd: Well, what I did was, I graduated early. I found out that I had enough credits to get out in January, well December 31st I guess, as opposed to the following June. So I jumped on it, I said I’m getting out because there were lots of jobs to be had. So before I graduated I took the Civil Service exam, and I had myself lined up for a job as soon as I graduated. That was with FHA, which is Federal Public Housing Authority, and that’s where my story begins with

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what I did for the war effort, which is, well, compared to what a lot of women did, I’m sure, but—

Dunham: Well, tell us about that.

1-00:21:31 Byrd: I shall, okay. We supplied the housing for the people who came to build the ships for World War II. We did all of the housing in Hunters Point and Richmond and Albany, and they were temporary war housing. That’s exactly what it was called, temporary war housing, and they’re still there today. That was what sixty years ago.

Dunham: In both Hunters Point and Richmond?

1-00:22:05 Byrd: Hunters Point still has, Richmond still has, Richmond still has one section left which is called Acheson Village—

Dunham: Oh, right, right.

1-00:22:13 Byrd: And they did fix them up a bit and sell them. Individual owners did buy them, so it doesn’t look like a housing project any more. Albany, additionally, the university has for student housing, and they’ve done a beautiful job of maintaining it. It looks much better than it did during the war.

Dunham: So what is the total number of units then at Hunters Point, do you know?

1-00:22:38 Byrd: Oh, I can’t remember.

Dunham: Okay, but it’s—

1-00:22:42 Byrd: But Hunters Point is still there, and it was never maintained, and it was terribly run down in more recent years. So it’s a pity because it was supposed to be temporary.

Dunham: How did you come to be in that position, you took a Civil Service exam, and then did you interview?

1-00:23:01 Byrd: Yeah, there was an opening in the Procurement Department at FPHA, so I took the job. I was like a G, is it GSA2, just the very beginning, a 2. So I went to work for the procurement officer, and there were just one, two, three, four of us in the office at that time. That was in January of 1943. Within three months, the secretary to the procurement officer quit, she was going to have a baby, so she quit. In those days you didn’t work when you were pregnant. So the procurement officer asked me if I would like to be her secretary, so I said,

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“Sure,” so I was her secretary for nine months. After that we expanded a lot. We grew to a department I think it was nineteen people or so, so she asked me to be her assistant, and that’s what did. I was the assistant procurement officer for most of my time there.

Dunham: You said in that role you were managing a number of folks?

1-00:24:27 Byrd: Yeah, I think it was fourteen. I can’t remember, but fourteen seems to stick in my mind, women who typed up all the requisitions that we had tons and tons of paperwork. Ted had to go to Washington and so forth. It was a paper machine. I was in charge of them, and I can remember my boss saying to me, “Don’t tell them how old you are,” because I was only like eighteen. “Don’t tell them your age,” because these are women forty-five years old, and they’re not going to want to take orders from an eighteen-year-old. I got away with it.

Dunham: Yeah, you were comfortable with it. Did you do any hiring?

1-00:25:18 Byrd: I myself didn’t do hiring. She did the hiring. It was more or less routine because there were a number of women who wanted to work. Everybody went to work then World War II.

Dunham: It was all women in the office?

1-00:25:35 Byrd: It was all women, it was all women, yeah, absolutely.

Dunham: What exactly were you doing in the procurement office?

1-00:25:41 Byrd: We acted as purchasing agents. The term procurement officer was the governmental term. We purchased all of the furnishings for the housing, for the federal housing that was being built, and I can remember particularly, I don’t know why, but I can remember buying garbage cans. So I think we bought paper products, and we bought furnishings for inside the units that people would need to live in them. Then when we expanded, when Washington decided that we were going to take on some more responsibilities, we actually purchased more than just the furnishings. We had a lot to do with I guess the lumber and cement, and all kinds of things, I can’t really remember.

Dunham: Sure, were there certain things there were shortages of that were—

1-00:26:44 Byrd: Oh, yeah, there were lots of things there were shortages of. The salesmen used to come, and we would have to make deals with the salesmen, make sure we got our share, more than our share and got enough to take care of our needs.

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Dunham: Were you negotiating prices?

1-00:27:02 Byrd: I didn’t negotiate price, no, no, the procurement officer did that. I can’t remember what I did, I just remember the salesmen coming in and I remember them sitting at my desk. They must have discussed something, we must have been, probably quantities.

Dunham: The sales people were always men?

1-00:27:20 Byrd: They were always men, yes. Thank you for correcting. They were always men. But I guess we talked about quantities and availability because it was such a scarcity of a lot of things.

Dunham: What was the office, it was all females you said, were they all white females?

1-00:27:45 Byrd: Oh, yes. Yes, I’m afraid so.

Dunham: What about in the housing complexes themselves? Do you know anything about how they were administered?

1-00:27:57 Byrd: No, because we turned them over to maybe FHA. I think our agency was only involved in the building.

Dunham: Because there, too, there were issues around segregation, and particularly in Hunters Point I think there were some real, it came to a head at some point— and there’re some interesting things I’ve read about as early as 1944 where there were some cross-cultural groups formed to really address that. I think for a period of time there was some progress, and then I think things probably went backwards again in there because there’s a long history at Hunters Point.

1-00:28:35 Byrd: If there’s going to be progress anywhere it would be San Francisco.

Dunham: Yeah, yeah. So how long did you work at the housing authority?

1-00:28:43 Byrd: I was there about two and a half years.

Dunham: Oh, wow, and so did it change much during the course of that? It was from early ’43 until the end of the war. Did you work then—?

1-00:28:54 Byrd: No, actually, I worked until ’45, until early ’45. Well, see, I started January of ’43 and I think I worked until about April of ’45, and then I had a baby.

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Dunham: Okay, yeah, then you stopped and that was the way. What was the social scene like during the war years, now that you’re out of high school? You were still living with your parents?

1-00:29:20 Byrd: I lived with my parents, yes, indeed. We always did.

Dunham: Were you allowed to go out at night now?

1-00:29:23 Byrd: Oh, yeah. Once I started earning my own money, no one was going to tell me what to do. [laughs]

Dunham: Okay, but you said he was really strict. Was there any confrontation about that, or he just accept that because you were—

1-00:29:35 Byrd: No, no, no, my father realized I was an adult.

Dunham: Okay, and your sister?

1-00:29:39 Byrd: Yeah, well, she had married during that time, and she was gone. Her husband was in training in the Air Force, and she was not around during that period.

Dunham: So what was the dating life like there?

1-00:29:54 Byrd: I could come and go as I pleased, and what I did most of the time was go out with my four girlfriends because there were no guys around anywhere. We went to the movies. We’d go down Market Street in San Francisco. They had beautiful movie theaters in those days, wonderful theaters.

Dunham: Do you remember the names?

1-00:30:13 Byrd: Oh, sure, the Fox, the Fox was absolutely great. They tore it down; it broke my heart. The Orpheum was there, the Golden Gate was there, which is still there.

Dunham: Was the Strand there then?

1-00:30:26 Byrd: The which?

Dunham: The Strand Theater, was that there?

1-00:30:28 Byrd: No, there was no Strand.

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Dunham: Okay.

1-00:30:32 Byrd: This is all along Market Street.

Dunham: All movie theaters, or live entertainment?

1-00:30:36 Byrd: All movies, well, there was also live entertainment at the Golden Gate. They had a stage show, plus the movie. I saw Frank Sinatra there in person.

Dunham: Oh, wow.

1-00:30:47 Byrd: That’s when I was younger.

Dunham: That was when?

1-00:30:50 Byrd: When I was younger.

Dunham: When you were in high school?

1-00:30:53 Byrd: No, I think I might have been even younger than high school.

Dunham: Oh, so that was with your family?

1-00:30:58 Byrd: My sister and I, my father dropped us off I believe, but I just remember my sister and I way down in the front row looking up at Frank Sinatra, and he was a skinny little thing.

Dunham: He was a young Frank Sinatra.

1-00:31:10 Byrd: Oh, yeah, with Tommy Dorsey’s orchestra, very young. He was just starting out.

Dunham: Did you ever see him again?

1-00:31:18 Byrd: Yeah, I saw him once at Cal Neva many years later.

Dunham: How was that, not as exciting?

1-00:31:25 Byrd: Well, I talked to him the second time because I told him I had seen him so many years before, but he was very pleasant. He was very pleasant, yeah, but I just think as he got older he lost his voice, in my opinion. But we were big

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Frank Sinatra fans, we were big big band fans. Another thing we used to do socially was they had dances at {Woulahands?}, big dance halls in San Francisco. There were two of them, can’t remember the name of the other one. There was one in Oakland called Sweets. You might have heard of Sweets.

Dunham: Yeah, yeah, I have heard of Sweets.

1-00:32:10 Byrd: My father wouldn’t let us go to Sweets, so I guess I was, I guess no, I know I was out of high school, but he still said no, you’re not going to Sweets.

Dunham: There were still certain rules, because it was in Oakland?

1-00:32:22 Byrd: He thought it was too dangerous, yeah. I don’t know whether it was or no. He was really protective as well.

Dunham: Were these dance halls, were they integrated, or were they—

1-00:32:36 Byrd: No. No, they were not integrated. No, they weren’t. I think they were definitely they were separate dance places in the Fillmore, but no, they weren’t, unfortunately they weren’t. But we would go on Saturday nights and dance—

Dunham: Were there many men at those?

1-00:33:03 Byrd: Yeah, quite a few. There were a lot of servicemen. San Francisco was a Navy town. It was known for being a Navy town, and when the ships came in, you could walk down Market Street and all you’d see were white hats, those white round hats.

Dunham: Right.

1-00:33:24 Byrd: So I guess a lot of Navy people or any service people went to the dances. I can’t remember anyone in specific, I just remember going with the girls.

Dunham: So did you still have a curfew?

1-00:33:38 Byrd: No, there was no such word.[laughter]

Dunham: Well, I thought your father might have created that.

1-00:33:45 Byrd: It wasn’t a word that was in use at the time, sorry.

Dunham: No, no problem.

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1-00:33:55 Byrd: No, we didn’t at that age, we didn’t. But younger, we certainly did when we went to the dances at the church and we were, like maybe I was fifteen and sixteen, seventeen. Sixteen and seventeen I would say, my father said we had to be in at eleven o’clock, I believe it was, my sister and I, and I couldn’t go without my sister. I mean, we had to go together, and we had to come home together. Just to be allowed to go out at night was amazing as it was, so my sister used to drag me off the floor and make me go home.

Dunham: You enjoyed it more, or she just—

1-00:34:39 Byrd: I loved the dance.

Dunham: You were just less worried about your father.

1-00:34:42 Byrd: Yeah, both, both.

Dunham: What about so once you were after high school, and these dances and the sailors and all, was there a lot of sort of fly by night romance going on?

1-00:34:52 Byrd: No, actually not. You know, it’s difficult to explain, but people went to those dances to dance. I guess maybe a lot of people did meet the person they were going to marry and that sort of thing, but none of us did, none of us. We just went for the fun, and then we just left. We didn’t really care; all we cared about was that the person was a good dancer.

Dunham: How did you learn to dance?

1-00:35:29 Byrd: Well, when I was a freshman in high school we had after school dances, and I can remember very vividly, my sister and I walked to a girlfriend at first, house. She was a friend of both of ours, but she was a special girlfriend of my sister’s. We walk home from school to her house, and we practiced in the living room when I first went to high school. I guess they just started the dances, I’m not sure. But that was so that we could dance at the after school dances once a month or something. So that’s how we learned.

Dunham: That’s neat. While you were still working in ’44 did you hear about the Port Chicago explosion?

1-00:36:19 Byrd: Oh, yeah.

Dunham: What did you hear of it?

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1-00:36:19 Byrd: Well, I don’t remember at the time. Actually, I don’t remember having heard about it. I should say no, I didn’t. I didn’t know anything about it at the time, but since then I did. I read a book on it, yeah.

Dunham: Okay, the Robert Allen book?

1-00:36:38 Byrd: Yeah. I think I have it here somewhere.

Dunham: Yeah, yeah, well that’s quite, have you been out to Port Chicago?

1-00:36:47 Byrd: No.

Dunham: No, okay. They just had the sixty-sixth, sixty-sixth right memorial July 17.

1-00:36:55 Byrd: Is that right?

Dunham: Yeah, and it just got kind of elevated as a park status, so it’s part of, we’re doing more interviews now connected with Port Chicago, trying as much as we can. It’s hard to find survivors and all, but also interested in anyone’s recollections. But you don’t remember anything at the time about the mutiny trial, Treasure Island, it wasn’t something—

1-00:37:12 Byrd: No, I don’t remember. Just afterwards there was a meeting at a theater in Berkeley, leave it to Berkeley, and I went to it because I was interested, and it was about about all the trial. It explained to people what had happened.

Dunham: When was this, in the ‘80s?

1-00:37:35 Byrd: Oh, yeah, maybe the ‘80s, yeah, let me think, yeah, maybe—

Dunham: Or end of the Allen—

1-00:37:40 Byrd: I think it was a little bit earlier than that. I think it was a little earlier than, I remember the book, that’s when I bought the book.

Dunham: Well, I think it came out in the ‘80s, the 80s the Allen book, I think. Was it the UC Theater, do you remember?

1-00:37:57 Byrd: That’s where it was, the UC Theater.

Dunham: Well, I miss the UC Theater, so, was there a movie, or was it just an event?

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1-00:38:04 Byrd: Well, maybe it was just a presentation on the stage.

Dunham: There have been some documentaries done about Port Chicago.

1-00:38:11 Byrd: Yeah, I can’t remember, but I do recall being really upset.

Dunham: Yeah, yeah, yeah, it’s quite a big deal, yeah. But immediately it was just the explosion was heard pretty far around, too.

1-00:38:30 Byrd: Yeah, we didn’t know about it in San Francisco. We didn’t hear it, and we didn’t pay any attention.

Dunham: Yeah, well, back to so you were still living in San Francisco.

1-00:38:40 Byrd: Living at home with my parents.

Dunham: Now, of course, you worked for the Housing Authority. You were aware of this massive housing boom and all, was your neighborhood impacted at all? Were there lots more people coming right where you lived, and people renting out rooms and such a lot more?

1-00:38:58 Byrd: Pardon.

Dunham: People renting out rooms and that kind of thing?

1-00:39:01 Byrd: No, no, no, not people who worked in the, but they did build some apartment units right across the street and what they did in empty lots, a whole city block. It was a big city block, and there was a reservoir up at Holly Park and right down from, first there was the reservoir, then down that block the rest of it was all just an empty lot. Somebody built a lot of units, and a lot of people did move in and rent, and that might have been war connected, I don’t remember.

Dunham: Were you aware of any impacts of a lot of people coming from the South and elsewhere?

1-00:39:46 Byrd: No, not at all, they didn’t come out—

Dunham: Affect your neighborhood—

1-00:39:49 Byrd: Or at least I didn’t know anyone with a Southern accent.

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Dunham: Okay, that wasn’t part of your experience.

1-00:39:57 Byrd: No, it wasn’t.

Dunham: Well, how did you, I think you started to tell me before how you met your husband? It was quite a unique, three of you, I think.

1-00:40:05 Byrd: No, five.

Dunham: Five?

1-00:40:07 Byrd: Well, three of us in the, yeah. There were the five girls who went to the movies together and that sort of thing, and we were very close friends. We all had graduated from Balboa, and every one of us was working. No one went to college. The mother of my closest friend was a, she worked for the Navy in the shipyards at Hunters Point, and she was a night telephone operator. This was back in the days when you plugged in like what’s her name, the wonderful comedienne?

Dunham: Lily Tomlin’s character?

1-00:40:52 Byrd: Lily Tomlin, like Lily Tomlin, yeah, she plugged in, yeah. So, she worked from midnight until eight in the morning or something, and she got to talking, she would talk with the boys on the ship who were standing watch, and she talked with them purposely to keep them awake, so they would stay awake when they were on watch. There were a couple that were her favorites. She just got really well acquainted with several of them. So one time she said to one of them, I guess, she invited him to dinner and said bring four of your friends. I have five girls and I’ll have the five girls over and I’ll fix you all a big home cooked dinner. They thought that would be wonderful to have a home cooked meal. So we showed up, and they showed up, and there were five of them and five of us, and we all got along very well, and we ended up going to the ship’s dance. They invited us to this, three of us went to the ship’s dance with three of them, and as it turns out, three out of the five of us married within the group.

Dunham: Wow.

1-00:42:07 Byrd: I know one, my best friend, stayed married for, I know that she had a couple of, had two children, and then she died fairly young. So I don’t know what happened with her husband, and I lost touch with the other one.

Dunham: Okay, and how about your own relationship?

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1-00:42:32 Byrd: My marriage lasted twelve years. Twelve years, and then I decided to take on my three children by myself, yeah. We lived in Concord at the time because it was the least expensive place to buy a house.

Dunham: What year was that, so what year did you get married?

1-00:42:53 Byrd: I got married in ’44, 1944, and my daughter was born in ’45. We lived in Albany. We bought a little house in Albany.

Dunham: After your, or around when your daughter was born?

1-00:43:07 Byrd: After my daughter was born. Actually, my husband was in the Navy, was one of those Navy guys that she invited to dinner and—

Dunham: Stationed in San Francisco?

1-00:43:17 Byrd: No, he was on a ship. So the ship left, and so I was by myself and I lived with my parents. I never left my parents, and by then I was pregnant as well, so after my daughter was born, I moved in with my sister whose husband had returned from the Air Force. He had been discharged, and he was going to Cal on the Bill of Rights, or the—

Dunham: GI Bill?

1-00:43:54 Byrd: GI Bill, GI Bill, so I lived with them until my husband came home, which was eighteen months later. So he was gone for two years and—

Dunham: So what was that like during that time?

1-00:44:10 Byrd: It was normal.

Dunham: You were busy raising the baby part of that time.

1-00:44:16 Byrd: Yeah, I was, I worked. My sister took care of the baby. She had a little girl as well.

Dunham: So what work were you doing?

1-00:44:23 Byrd: I worked for Durkee’s Famous Foods, who manufactured mayonnaise and oils and things like that.

Dunham: What did you do?

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1-00:44:38 Byrd: I was a secretary. It was the boss and I out in the warehouse, and I actually hired all the warehousemen and stuff, things like that. It was just an ordinary job. It wasn’t anything that was as interesting as some of the other work I’ve done.

Dunham: How often did you see your husband?

1-00:45:05 Byrd: Pardon?

Dunham: How often did you see him?

1-00:45:07 Byrd: Not at all.

Dunham: You didn’t see him at all for eighteen months.

1-00:45:10 Byrd: No.

Dunham: How long had you been together before he left?

1-00:45:13 Byrd: I didn’t see him at all for almost two years.

Dunham: Two years, excuse me.

1-00:45:15 Byrd: A year, we’d only been together for like weeks when he went, just weeks.

Dunham: And you got engaged and married—

1-00:45:24 Byrd: The minute he came back. See I met him one year. I met him I guess in ’42, no, ’43, then they left right away after the five of us met each other, then their ship left, and so he was gone. He transferred off the ship so he could come home and ask me to marry him. Everybody thought I should, so I did.

Dunham: You weren’t so sure? Who’s everybody, your parents and your friends?

1-00:46:03 Byrd: Oh, no, that wasn’t it. No, friends and neighbors, and, “Oh, you’re going to get married, oh, he’s so, you’re going to be married.” I mean it was just the thing you did.

Dunham: Were you excited at the time?

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1-00:46:15 Byrd: Not terribly, not terribly. Anyway, it just seemed to me like everybody had made the decision for me. Now that I look back, I don’t know why I ever allowed this, but I was just a kid. I was only nineteen, not quite nineteen.

Dunham: Were many of your other friends married or getting married?

1-00:46:41 Byrd: My sister was married, and I was the first one out of our group to get married. Not I had some older friends from church who were married, yeah. The girls all got married, yeah they did. They got married, and then they had a baby right away. We were all Catholic, so anyway—

Dunham: Well, along those lines, that you were all Catholic, but did you ever know of anyone having an abortion or anything like that?

1-00:47:08 Byrd: Oh, no, no, no. If anyone did, it was kept a secret. Who would know?

Dunham: Or anyone in high school who did get pregnant and kind of go away or anything?

1-00:47:21 Byrd: No, I didn’t. I was very innocent about all that sort of thing.

Dunham: Yeah, so I understand you got talked into marriage.

1-00:47:31 Byrd: Yeah, I mean everybody expected it, and I thought well, I guess this is what I’m supposed to do, and so I did. Then he got on a ship, and he was gone. That’s when he was gone for two years. I had the baby by myself, and he didn’t come home until she was eighteen months old. So I guess he was gone about almost two years. He was a regular Navy man, that’s why he was later getting back. He had a six-year enlistment, and he did not re-enlist. So we bought a little house in Albany, and we lived in Albany for five years, and then I decided I wanted to have another baby, so I did, it turned out to be twins, and our little house was just too small. That’s when we moved to a three-bedroom house, and unfortunately, we had to move out. But it was far different in Concord in those days. It was a farming community.

Dunham: What year would that have been about?

1-00:48:46 Byrd: Let’s see, the twins were born in 1950, so it was about fifty, maybe they were a year and a half old, ’51 or ’52.

Dunham: Back up for a minute, so he was away for a couple of years. Now how was it when he came back?

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1-00:49:00 Byrd: Oh, when he came back, he worked, and I—

Dunham: Did you stop working then?

1-00:49:06 Byrd: I stopped working for a while, but then I went back because we still didn’t have enough money.

Dunham: Was your sister still helping out with your child?

1-00:49:16 Byrd: She took care of Janie when I went back to work, yes, yes, for quite a while, and then after that, a friend who lived closer to me, who lived in Albany, did watch Janie when Janie was about three or four. So when Janie was much younger than that my sister took care of her. So I think they split the time between them like my sister and my girlfriend Virginia.

Dunham: Your girlfriend Virginia, was she married, too, or married with children?

1-00:49:49 Byrd: She was married, and she had a little girl, yeah, she had a little girl, too. I had known her since I was very little, since I was very little.

Dunham: Was she one of the five?

1-00:49:57 Byrd: No.

Dunham: No, okay.

1-00:50:00 Byrd: No. We did go to school together.

Dunham: Okay.

1-00:50:03 Byrd: We had lived in Berkeley for a little while, which I skipped over because I didn’t want to make this boring.[laughter]

Dunham: So she was, you were back in Berkeley—

1-00:50:11 Byrd: Well, I was in Berkeley as a little girl. I was very young, I was like about two until I was about seven, we lived in Berkeley. She was my little playmate.

Dunham: Did you stay in touch, or you got reacquainted with her?

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1-00:50:25 Byrd: Yes, we stayed in touch. We stayed in touch, yes, for many years. So she took care of my daughter for a while, and then I decided I wanted to have another child, so I had twins. So with that was the big move then.

Dunham: Was that where both you and your husband—

1-00:50:45 Byrd: No, actually we thought if they, we had no idea that there was anybody in the family who had had twins.

Dunham: Oh, no, I just meant you both, did you decide together, or was it just a decision that—

1-00:50:56 Byrd: No, no.

Dunham: You wanted it. You wanted it, and he was—

1-00:50:58 Byrd: Yeah, I felt like something was missing, and you’re supposed to have two children, you follow the rules of the time.

Dunham: Okay.

1-00:51:14 Byrd: So I thought, “Oh, I’ve got to have me that second child, I better have a second child.” But no, I just felt like I’d like to have another baby and little did I know, nor did the doctor know, that it was going to be twins. They were born in Albany Hospital, which is now the Albany Library, Public Library.

Dunham: Okay.

1-00:51:34 Byrd: It was a little tiny hospital right around the corner from where we lived, fortunately. Then the house was too small, as I said, so we moved out to this farming community called Concord. We walked all over town, I mean it was just, and the kids played, and there was a creek ran in back of our little house, and they swung from the trees, which they didn’t tell me until they were grown up. They did catch pollywogs, and they did all these things that you can’t do in the city.

Dunham: What part of Concord?

1-00:52:11 Byrd: In Concord?

Dunham: No, what part of Concord?

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1-00:52:14 Byrd: Oh, it was just downtown I guess you would call it now, it was very close to where the BART station is now.

Dunham: Okay, so near Santos, where they have Santos Park, kind of—

1-00:52:27 Byrd: Santos Park was within walking distance, yeah. It was right where Monument turns into Galindo.

Dunham: Okay. What was the community like there?

1-00:52:37 Byrd: It was working people, not very well off, but I would say low middle class, low middle, something like that.

Dunham: What was your husband doing?

1-00:52:56 Byrd: He was a salesman for a paint company in Oakland. Oh, he did several things, but that was the major thing I guess.

Dunham: How did he commute?

1-00:53:09 Byrd: He drove. We all drove in those days. There was no freeway. There wasn’t even a freeway then.

Dunham: Did you have multiple cars?

1-00:53:24 Byrd: Oh, no. We were lucky to have a car.

Dunham: Well, you said you all drove, so I was curious.

1-00:53:31 Byrd: No, we walked all over.

Dunham: Yeah, yeah.

1-00:53:32 Byrd: No, we walked everywhere, yeah. But then he didn’t do very well at any of his jobs. He just couldn’t get into anything, and I found I had to go back to work. So I did. I worked for the school district for five years, and then there was an opening in the city and there was also an opening in the City of Walnut Creek, and I got offers for both jobs. So, of course, I took Concord because it was close to home.

Dunham: Sure.

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1-00:54:12 Byrd: I went to work for the City of Concord, which was very small at the time. It was in one little building which in years later became just Police, the whole building was for the Police. But this was one little building that held everybody. I think in our area, the City Manager’s office, there was probably the City Manager, the City Planner, the Public Works Director. There couldn’t have been more than fifteen people, or ten people, it was very small, and we grew. It was a wonderful time to go to work for the city because the population explosion occurred. I don’t know if you’ve heard that word. There was a tremendous need for housing, and people started going out to the suburbs where all of these housing tracts were being built, and they could afford to buy a house. So it was this huge, huge explosion. Well, we had to provide then for all of this new population, so we had to do all of the infrastructure, and we built all of the swimming pools and parks. We built seven parks, and I think we did a really good job of building public facilities.

Dunham: Did that work compare at all to what you had done during the war?

1-00:55:49 Byrd: No, not really.

Dunham: Not really. What were you doing there at the City of Concord?

1-00:55:54 Byrd: Well, I worked for, I started out for the city, I was always in the City Manager’s office, and I started out as the secretary for the Assistant City Manager, then I became the City Manager’s secretary, then I became Administrative Aide to the City Council. By then we had gotten our new building, and this was years later, we had, maybe six or seven years later, we had expanded tremendously, and there was a lot of opportunity. We had a very active City Council, and so I decided that our City Manager, I was working for the City Manager, and I decided that he needed to have more time to administer to the needs of the city and less time taking care of the needs of the Mayor and the City Council members, so I took that on. As a result, I got a very nice promotion.

Dunham: So what was the job you took?

1-00:57:01 Byrd: I became Assistant, it’s a long title, Assistant to the City Manager and the City Council.

Dunham: That was a newly created position?

1-00:57:08 Byrd: Yeah. I created it.

Dunham: It was necessary.

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1-00:57:12 Byrd: I felt it was, and it was also opportunistic.

Dunham: Fair enough, and did that work out well?

1-00:57:18 Byrd: Very, very well, very well, I got into management and it made quite a difference in my income, and it was really a very fascinating job because I was exposed to quite a lot of things.

Dunham: How long had you been working with the city when that came about?

1-00:57:39 Byrd: I think about six or seven years. It was gradual, first I was called the Mayor’s Administrative Aide, and then every time I went in for a promotion I had to dream up a new title because that’s the only way you can get promoted. You go across the steps, you know how governmental agencies do, and then when you get to the end, you’re stuck unless you can find something new. So I had to keep redefining myself.

Dunham: How old are your children at this point?

1-00:58:23 Byrd: Oh, by the time I got into management my kids were grown.

Dunham: Okay. So when you moved out to Concord you weren’t working for a while?

1-00:58:31 Byrd: I didn’t work for about two or three years, and then I did go back to work and worked constantly from then on. I think it was maybe even less than two years. It seems like I’ve worked all my life.

Dunham: Were the kids in school, or were they day care or other options?

1-00:58:45 Byrd: They were in school, and then part of the time their father took care of them, and then I decided it was a lot easier just to do it on my own, so I divorced him, and it was financially a lot easier. The children were, the twins were six and my daughter was eleven, and I could not afford the babysitter. I had a babysitter for the twins, and there just wasn’t enough money to pay a babysitter and all the household expenses and feed and clothe the kids, so my daughter walked the children home from school. They had to wait in school until she got out, but all the teachers there were such a help, they were so wonderful. They would keep an eye out for them, the nurse would keep an eye out, everybody did. They knew my situation.

Dunham: And your husband was completely out of the picture—

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1-00:59:50 Byrd: He was out by then, yeah, so they’d wait for Janie, and then she would walk them home. It was only a couple of blocks, a block and a half maybe, and they would wait for me until I could get off work. So that’s how I got them through until they were old enough to take care of themselves.

Dunham: Sure, sure.

1-01:00:14 Byrd: They did take care of themselves a lot. We lived on a cul-de-sac in a neighborhood that was; at that time most women didn’t work. So there were a lot of housewives, a lot of women at home, and a lot of people kept an eye out for the kids for me.

Dunham: So did you work more because you needed to to help take care of the family or—

1-01:00:42 Byrd: You mean when I first went back to work?

Dunham: I guess, yeah, I mean—

1-01:00:42 Byrd: I absolutely needed to, absolutely needed to when I first went back, yeah.

Dunham: Okay, and it wasn’t so much because you could work and take care of the family that led to the divorce, there were other—

1-01:00:54 Byrd: Oh, no, it was that it was cheaper to support three—

Dunham: He was a liability.

1-01:01:00 Byrd: He was a liability.

Dunham: I’m sorry.

1-01:01:02 Byrd: That’s very well put.

Dunham: Okay. Well, we’re just at the end of this tape. I’m going to stop, and if I could continue a little more.

Dunham: So, I’m here with Olga Byrd. This is David Dunham on August 17, 2010, and this is Tape 2. And let’s just follow up on a few things. You mentioned about moving to Concord and that that was basically to afford a larger house. What were your impressions of moving out there, moving to Concord?

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2-00:00:41 Byrd: You mean—

Dunham: From Albany, I guess we didn’t talk too much about Albany. I mean you had lived there two to seven and then you came back out after you got married.

2-00:00:46 Byrd: I lived there for five years.

Dunham: What was Albany Berkeley like at that time?

2-00:00:54 Byrd: Well, I’m not aware, I wasn’t as aware of political situations then, that came in later years. I don’t know what it was, whether it was the interest in raising a small family, a young family, I don’t know why, but I wasn’t as aware as I turned out to be in later years. So I would say I know now that I’m a Berkeley person, my definition, but at that time I didn’t even think about political or social things.

Dunham: So when you say aware more in later years, just what do you mean by that as far as your later perspective?

2-00:01:39 Byrd: Well, Berkeley’s my kind of town. It’s far more liberal thinking, I don’t know how to say this nicely, but the causes that most people believe in, I believe in, the same kinds of equality causes, which I had developed earlier, but Berkeley to me is just so far ahead of most areas in its understanding of—

Dunham: So did you run into any conflicts as you maybe were in communities where you didn’t have—

2-00:02:19 Byrd: Oh, yeah.

Dunham: So how did that—

2-00:02:24 Byrd: Well, what comes to mind as soon as you said that, when I lived in Concord, it was actually in connection with my work. There’s a very prominent individual in Concord who was, in fact, responsible for the pavilion, the Concord Pavilion, which was built during the time that I worked for the City Council. He had formed an organization of men, taken from the Commonwealth Club in San Francisco when they were men only, and it was called something common, oh, I’ve forgotten the name of it. But anyway, it was a similar organization, and I was very adamant about people’s rights, women’s rights and equality, and also people of color.

So I was very active in anything I could do to assist in those areas. I formed a women’s group in Concord for equality, and everybody knew that, everybody

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knew about it. He was always very disrespectful of me for that reason; I didn’t know my place and all of that. So then at one point I had developed for my work, I had developed a consumer hot line which was the first in any city west of the Mississippi that had any consumer rights advocacy at all. I put together the plan, and what we did was we served the citizens as advocates for any complaints they might have as consumers. In fact, I was written up in the, oh, gee, I lost the, oh, the Congressional Record for this because it was the first city. So I was very active in that as well. That was all in my working career. At one point this club, they had guest speakers once a month, luncheons with guest speakers, and they had a leading advocate for consumers, consumer advocate as their guest speaker. I can’t think of his name maybe, you’ll know him, he ran for President once, once or twice.

Dunham: Consumer, Ralph Nader?

2-00:05:33 Byrd: Pardon.

Dunham: Ralph Nader?

2-00:05:36 Byrd: Ralph Nader, thank you. Ralph Nader was coming to speak, so I called up this gentleman’s office, he was the president of the club, and I called his office and I said I want a ticket to the lunch Friday, and his secretary said, “Olga, you know better than that.” I said, “What do you mean?” She said, “You know women can’t go to that lunch, you know that.” I said, “Well, I have a consumer advocacy program, and I just don’t understand why I can’t go hear the leading consumer advocate for the country.” She said, “You’re not going and that’s it.” And that was the end of it. So I got together with some of my friends, some of my women group friends, and we picketed.

Dunham: Wow.

2-00:06:24 Byrd: It was at the Concord Inn, and we picketed it. Of course, I knew we weren’t going to get inside, but I cannot believe that the Chief of Police came up to me and said, “Olga, you know if you go inside I’m going to have to arrest you.” I said “I’m not going to go inside.” So that’s one of the things. Did I answer your question? I forgot what your question was.

Dunham: Oh, well, no, that’s great. So were you chanting and had signs? What was the message of the signs?

2-00:06:56 Byrd: The message was women not allowed, women not allowed, and Ralph Nader here to speak on consumer, for the consumer, and we are consumers, and we’re not allowed to hear him speak.

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Dunham: At this point you already had a consumer advocacy group?

2-00:07:17 Byrd: Yes, I did.

Dunham: So was this before kind of the women’s group and dealing with issues or women’s and people of color?

2-00:07:24 Byrd: It was after, actually. The women’s group was informal, but this was a city function, the consumer advocacy group was a city function that I started in the City Manager’s office, and the Mayor’s office, and the Mayor came up and said to me, “It’s not right, Olga, it’s not right,” and he patted me on the shoulder, it isn’t right that you’re not allowed to be a member, and then he walked right in the front door.

Dunham: Oh, wow, so did anything come of that then or in the future?

2-00:07:58 Byrd: I got my picture in the paper.

Dunham: Did it lead to future negotiations or future allowances, I mean eventually—

2-00:08:06 Byrd: No, no. I heard years later, maybe a couple of years later, they did open up to women after the Commonwealth Club did, then the local group did as well, and then so a couple of people said to me, “Are you going to join, are you going to be a member?” And I said, “No, I have no interest.” It wasn’t that, I just thought it was so unfair, unfair to women.

The other thing about women that pleased me a lot was that I did always speak up for women, equal pay for equal work and that sort of thing, and for being allowed to take a man’s job if they were qualified. So the first time that I saw a city public works truck going down Willow Pass Road with a woman driving it, I just let out a whoop and a holler, I just cheered. I was so happy.

Dunham: Yeah, when was that?

2-00:09:19 Byrd: Oh, gosh. That was probably, let me see, in the mid 70s, mid to late 70s.

Dunham: When you moved into management then were you doing some hiring?

2-00:09:29 Byrd: I personally did not hire, no.

Dunham: Okay.

2-00:09:33 Byrd: I didn’t want to, but I did want women to have an equal chance.

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Dunham: Yeah, you did speak, you were an advocate so you mentioned also for people of color as well, so were there specific incidents that happened or that helped—

2-00:09:52 Byrd: Not really. The only time I had any opportunity at all I remember I was, I had moved in 1969 I moved back to the Bay Area, the East Bay Area. I was living in Point Richmond, and we had, the City Planners had hired an intern to work for the summer. He was a young student, and he lived in North Richmond, which was and still is a very rough neighborhood, very crime ridden at this point. I used to go pick him up and drive him to work and drive him home. I can remember sitting there in the car waiting for him, and say I wish he’d hurry up and get here. But that’s the only incident ever I could be of any help at all.

Dunham: Did the consumer advocacy group continue beyond that?

2-00:10:55 Byrd: What we did was I turned it over to the secretary after it was well established, and we made referrals. We acted as a referral agency for the citizens, yeah.

Dunham: What was, I guess, backing up a little, too, and just kind of raising your children as a single mother at a certain point, what was that experience like? Did you have any—

2-00:11:20 Byrd: Oh, we had a great time.

Dunham: Okay. Were there many other single—

2-00:11:24 Byrd: None, none.

Dunham: Okay, but you didn’t feel any negativity from that?

2-00:11:30 Byrd: Yes, I did, yes, I did.

Dunham: What was that like?

2-00:11:33 Byrd: Well, it kind of surprised me, but I thought, “Well, that’s their problem, not mine.” Yeah, a lot of people thought, “Stay away from her.” This one man in the neighborhood who wouldn’t let his wife associate with me. She had been a good friend.

Dunham: Oh, really, wow.

2-00:11:58 Byrd: I thought well, that’s his problem, not mine.

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Dunham: Yeah, well, it was too bad for her as well, but others were supportive?

2-00:12:08 Byrd: Oh yes, there were people who really were helpful to me, oh sure.

Dunham: Well, since you said that you really had more Berkeley politically, or it ultimately came to that anyway. Now what was Concord like at the time, I mean, did you have other, aside from personal conflicts, just political—

2-00:12:26 Byrd: No, Concord was not particularly democratic; in fact, City Council members are non-partisan okay? Yet I knew who was a Republican and who was a Democrat. We had, at least in the beginning, many more Republicans than we did Democrats, but we all got along. It wasn’t so partisan, nothing was so partisan in those days. I think everybody was a lot more tolerant of the various parties than they are today. I don’t think, I know it.

Dunham: Yeah, and what about the schools at the time? Were they very diverse in Concord then?

2-00:13:19 Byrd: Oh, no, no, no. Pittsburg had a large racially mixed group of people living in Pittsburg, and so the Pittsburg schools were more integrated.

Dunham: What did your kids decide? Did your kids go through high school in Concord?

2-00:13:42 Byrd: Yeah, yeah.

Dunham: What high school?

2-00:13:44 Byrd: They went to Mt. Diablo High.

Dunham: Okay.

2-00:13:46 Byrd: Yeah, yeah. I thought the twins went, but they spent more of their time cutting class than they went to school, I discovered after they were adults.

Dunham: Okay.

2-00:13:56 Byrd: So the school lacked a little bit in administration I think. There was a little problem there, but there was something I was going to say.

Dunham: I’m sorry.

2-00:14:10 Byrd: No, I lost it, but we went by the subject so—

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Dunham: You were talking about Pittsburg a little bit I think.

2-00:14:19 Byrd: Yeah, before then, yeah.

Dunham: Well, if it comes to you, feel free to jump in any time.

2-00:14:28 Byrd: Oh, yes, yes, my education.

Dunham: Oh right,

2-00:14:33 Byrd: Well, the city had a policy of sending, of allowing anyone to go to school as long as it was in your area, in the area in which you worked, and the city paid the tuition and the books, paid the tuition and the books, so I got all of my college education, and I even went to graduate school and paid for by the city.

Dunham: Great, what did you study?

2-00:15:00 Byrd: You study public administration. First I went to Diablo Valley College, and I did that on my own. In those days it was free. I started that before I ever went to work for the city. It took me forever to get through because my children were small, and I felt like I had to spend, I couldn’t spend too much time away from them. I went to school nights, so I went to school one night a week and that meant one night a week studying, so it was two nights out of the week. I felt that I couldn’t, I tried once to take two courses in a semester, but it was just too much time away from the kids, so it took me a long, long time to get through. Then I went on to upper division at Cal State Hayward mostly and some UC classes. They were all public administration courses, and by the time I got into the graduate program, my children were raised and gone. And I had left, I’d come back to—

Dunham: You mentioned growing up in the Catholic Church a bit, was church still part of your life—

2-00:16:27 Byrd: No, actually it never had been for very long. We were not raised in the church. My mother had been a Lutheran and my father a Catholic, so I guess they decided that we should decide whether we wanted to be Lutheran or Catholic. So they waited until we were older to make that decision. My sister decided to make that decision for us, and she decided we would be Catholic. So I didn’t really pay too much attention. It wasn’t one of my high priority things to do. Just the social part, that was. I went to church every Sunday, but it was more because everybody went.

Dunham: As an adult, too?

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2-00:17:19 Byrd: Oh, no, not as an adult. I never went to church as an adult.

Dunham: What else did you do for social and community—

2-00:17:22 Byrd: What as an adult?

Dunham: Yeah, when you were raising your kids.

2-00:17:25 Byrd: Oh, I couldn’t do very much.

Dunham: You were busy, yes, you were very busy.

2-00:17:29 Byrd: Let me think. Oh, I don’t know, I did have a group of friends that we would go out occasionally. We would have house parties occasionally. Then I did take up skiing. I know the twins were about sixteen by then, so I guess Janie, my daughter, was grown, and we would go up to the Sierras and ski. We went once after; I guess it was while I still had the twins at home, I guess it was the three of us, and I went with my group of friends to Aspen, Colorado, and another time I went to Jackson Hole, Wyoming, and I love skiing in the Rockies, it was so much nicer. But we would often go up to the Sierras as well, so that was an activity I did with the group besides having parties. Occasionally we’d go to the movies or something like that, yeah.

Dunham: Did you find yourself strict like your father?

2-00:18:44 Byrd: Oh, no, the opposite, unfortunately. Where’s the happy medium? No, I mean as far as the twins were concerned, well, my daughter was very, very easy to raise, very, very easy to raise, but the boys could pull the wool over my eyes, I found out later.

Dunham: Two on one there.

2-00:19:07 Byrd: Yeah, both of them, yeah.

Dunham: Now we touched on Port Chicago before. I take it from what you said, but I was just curious since you worked there in Concord in the City Planning office and all, did you have awareness of the town of Port Chicago?

2-00:19:22 Byrd: Oh, sure.

Dunham: So what was your prospective of, were you aware when the Navy—

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2-00:19:26 Byrd: Well, no, I didn’t, at that time Port Chicago was closed down. There was nothing going on when I worked for the city.

Dunham: But there was still a small town there until the late—

2-00:19:40 Byrd: Well, it’s a little, yeah. It was a little town, I didn’t even know if it, I doubt that it was incorporated. It was just a little community. We didn’t pay much attention to it.

Dunham: Okay, okay, very well. We talked briefly when you were with the Housing Authority about Acheson Village. Did you know much about the actual development of it at the time?

2-00:20:11 Byrd: Of Acheson Village?

Dunham: Yeah.

2-00:20:13 Byrd: Nothing, no. Hunters Point was, we were more familiar with Hunters Point because we lived in the city, and Acheson Village was much smaller housing, and that seems strange when I think about it now because the ships that were built right here, right where I live in Marina Bay, the ships left the port right here from the Ford Plant, from that area. Oh, I’ve forgotten, one a day, it can’t be one a day.

Dunham: It’s a lot.

2-00:20:55 Byrd: A lot, it was—

Dunham: What was there other housing projects that you contributed to?

2-00:21:00 Byrd: No, no. I’m surprised that there weren’t more housing projects provided for the people of Richmond. Acheson Village is the only one that I’m aware of, yeah. And it’s not that big.

Dunham: Yeah, well, do you—

2-00:21:24 Byrd: That’s too bad because I imagine people had a much more difficult time finding a place to live than they did from San Francisco.

Dunham: Well, the population went from approximately 20,000 to 120,000.

2-00:21:34 Byrd: Exactly.

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Dunham: People were staying somewhere, including the bowling alley and also around the clock—

2-00:21:41 Byrd: So I don’t think we helped Richmond that much. I know we helped San Francisco a lot, and now I don’t know how much ship building in San Francisco how it compared to the ship building in Richmond. I don’t know about how many ships went out.

Dunham: Have you been back to Hunter Point and Bernal Heights in the Mission much? Do you have any perspective on it?

2-00:22:05 Byrd: No, I’ve never been to Hunters Point, I just know it. No, I’ve never been there. Actually, I haven’t been to, I’ve been to the Mission district to go to plays, a couple of plays.

Dunham: Where did you go to the plays?

2-00:22:22 Byrd: There’s a little tiny playhouse trying to get its feet on the ground which I can’t remember the name of.

Dunham: Not the Marsh.

2-00:22:33 Byrd: The Marsh, that’s it, the Marsh. Oh, you’re great!

Dunham: That seems to be doing pretty well; it’s lasted a long time. It moved around a lot and it’s been in that home on Valencia for maybe fifteen or twenty years, I don’t know. It’s been around quite a while.

2-00:22:49 Byrd: Yeah, that’s where I’ve gone.

Dunham: Yeah, there’s a lot of great solo theater there and other things, but—

2-00:22:54 Byrd: Yeah, we do a lot of theater. I’m still taking classes. I like going to school. But, no, I take a wonderful class in Albany called Theater Exploration.

Dunham: Oh, really?

2-00:23:11 Byrd: Great teacher, and we go to all the plays. We go to the plays at Berkeley Rep and the Aurora and Shotgun.

Dunham: Do you get discounted tickets?

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2-00:23:22 Byrd: Slightly, s lightly, the worst seats in the house, but slight discounts, yeah, a little bit, yeah, but the major thing that we benefit from is we also hear from, we have speakers, we have docents from the Berkeley Rep prior to each play that we see, and we have other speakers that come in from Shotgun and from San Francisco Playhouse.

Dunham: Did you see the Shotgun play on the shipyards? The Rosie the Riveter and Navy plays?

2-00:23:59 Byrd: I didn’t see the Shotgun one; I saw one aboard the ship that is in the Richmond Harbor, the Red Oak?

Dunham: Oh, okay.

2-00:24:12 Byrd: Do you know anything about the Red Oak?

Dunham: Yeah, yeah, oh yeah. No, that was kind of a, was that more like a musical comedy?

2-00:24:18 Byrd: It was, it was a musical.

Dunham: Yeah, this one was a little more serious, and looking at issues of race and stuff—

2-00:24:26 Byrd: Oh, really?

Dunham: It also had some music, it had some beautiful songs, but it was a really powerful piece, yeah.

2-00:24:32 Byrd: I should have seen it.

Dunham: Yeah, it was great.

2-00:24:33 Byrd: Aw, I missed it, yeah. You can only go to so many.

Dunham: Absolutely. Well, we had talked once a while back, I don’t know, we didn’t talk about your later work, but you mentioned something, I was just curious, I don’t know if you want to talk about it, but the UC experience you had? If you don’t want to talk to, that’s fine, but—

2-00:24:55 Byrd: No, that’s okay. No, I don’t mind, I don’t mind. While I was working for the City of Concord about half way through my career there I had done a lot of

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minute taking, taking minutes for meetings, I forgot, I know what I was trying to remember that I had done also was I took on the meetings of the Human Relations Advisory Committee, and that was in terms of human relations, so that’s where we did get some minority groups that we spoke for that we tried to solve problems for—

Dunham: Within Concord?

2-00:25:34 Byrd: In Concord, in Concord, yeah, citizens, yeah.

Dunham: So what type of issues came up there?

2-00:25:42 Byrd: Oh, gosh, if I can remember, housing, being denied housing—

Dunham: Discriminatory housing, yeah.

2-00:25:48 Byrd: Discriminatory housing, that was basically what I can remember.

Dunham: Renting or buying, or both?

2-00:25:55 Byrd: Either, no, renting, renting mostly.

Dunham: So how did people come to you?

2-00:26:03 Byrd: We had a commission that was appointed by the City Council, and we met once a month or twice a month, twice a month, and people could come to us with problems, present their problems, and we would then put them on the agenda for the meeting, so I kind of ran those meetings.

Dunham: Who adjudicated then determined the outcome?

2-00:26:31 Byrd: The commission tried to solve problems, yeah. We were all trying. I was the only staff.

Dunham: Okay, you mean everyone else was volunteer?

2-00:26:42 Byrd: No, well, the commission were volunteering, yeah, yeah, and I staffed the commission, that’s what I meant.

Dunham: Do you feel it was successful, or any progress?

2-00:26:52 Byrd: I can’t remember that we did anything consequential.

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Dunham: Okay, I mean individual cases of—

2-00:27:00 Byrd: I guess we must have done some good, but there weren’t as many problems as they have found in later years.

Dunham: In the—

2-00:27:13 Byrd: In terms of, yeah, this was in the 60s and 70s, no I think it was in the 70s. It was not in the 60s, it was in the 70s that we started.

Dunham: Okay.

2-00:27:25 Byrd: There weren’t really a whole lot of problems. They were basically happy.

Dunham: But there may have been a lot more cases of discrimination.

2-00:27:36 Byrd: That people didn’t come up, yeah.

Dunham: That they didn’t come forward, that’s why I asked how you kind of advertised or how you even found people, I mean, it’s such a—

2-00:27:46 Byrd: I can’t remember, I don’t think we did much; we were there in case somebody needed it, yeah.

Dunham: And it was created during that time frame—

2-00:27:58 Byrd: Yes, it was, yes, it was, yes. I think it was 70s, I don’t think it was in the 60s at all because we were so busy building our city. It seems to me it didn’t happen until the 70s.

Dunham: What was your experience at the UC office? Was it—

2-00:28:17 Byrd: Oh, yes. Well, as I said I had experience in writing minutes and so forth, and meeting attendance and all of that, so the university had an office of the secretary of the Regents, in which the secretary and her assistant were expected to retire in three years, in a three-year period, and they were looking for somebody to train. It would take three years to train this person to become the secretary of the Regents. So I accepted the job. I was interviewed, and I accepted it. They took me out to lunch to interview me, and it was all, that should have warned me.

But anyway, I did quit my job with the city and I moved over to the university. It was certainly it paid better, and it had far more opportunity. I

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would have commanded a very high salary by the time I became the secretary. So I worked under her, and I attempted to learn, started to learn the functions of the office, and I discovered a lot of things that I didn’t like. One of them was so much discrimination in the office. It was blatant, really blatant, and, in fact, to the point that we had two clerks who were both black, and one of them used to go and sit across the street on campus at her lunch time on the lawn there and had her lunch, and I did the same thing. I didn’t notice her the first couple of times, but then I finally noticed her, so I started walking back with her back to the office, which was right across the street from campus then. She would always excuse herself just before we got in the elevator, I think we were on the seventh floor, and just as I would go to get in the elevator, she’d say, “Well, I have to go do something,” and she’d go away, and that happened twice in a row. I thought that was kind of strange, what was she doing? So a few days later I was in the vault, which is a big room and looking up some minutes or something, and she came in really quickly and she said to me, “You better not be seen too often with me.” I just couldn’t believe it. I mean, I just could not believe that that existed in the university, so I added that to the list of things I didn’t like. There were a couple of other things that had to do with the Regents and their manipulating of the minutes which I didn’t like—

Dunham: Do you think someone had said something to her?

2-00:31:32 Byrd: No, I think she just knew, yeah, she just knew, yeah. The whole building, there was this elitism, this real, real sense of you belong here, and you belong here, and there was just a line drawn. It was very obvious. It was obvious to me from the first day.

Dunham: Did that come out in gendered ways, too?

2-00:31:57 Byrd: No, no, not if you were a secretary of the Regents it didn’t. Or her staff, or her assistant and her would-be successor, no. It was not, there were the men department heads whom we associated with, even to go to coffee everyday. She told me where to go to come down, when to go to coffee, she told me where to sit.

Dunham: Your trainer?

2-00:32:29 Byrd: Yeah, the head of the department, the secretary.

Dunham: So how long did you—

2-00:32:37 Byrd: I lasted a month.

Dunham: A month.

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2-00:32:38 Byrd: And then I just couldn’t take it any more. She was absolutely rude to the black girl who had told me to be careful, and terribly rude, blatantly. It was terrible how discriminatory she was, and so I left the office, and I never went back. Fortunately, they had not replaced me at the City of Concord, so I got my old job back.

Dunham: Had you moved to the Berkeley area at that time?

2-00:33:12 Byrd: No, I had already lived, I had moved back before that, yeah. Yeah, I used to commute, yeah. As soon as my children were raised, I came back home.

Dunham: And then you retired from the City of Concord.

2-00:33:27 Byrd: I retired from the City of Concord. I took an early retirement after twenty-one years because I felt the need for a new challenge. By then it had gotten old hat, and everything was running so smoothly. There were just no challenges. So I was bored, and so I decided to retire early. I went on and did some other things, and there’s a couple, I don’t know how far you want me to go into this. You want me to tell you one, or just the last one?

Dunham: Sure, if they were something of interest, yeah.

2-00:34:05 Byrd: There’s just two things. One is I went to work for the Governor’s Conference, which is, we had the governors of fourteen states, the fourteen western United States, and Alaska and Hawaii and Samoa and American, what do you call it? Lost it, anyway, we put on conferences for them. I loved being a meeting planner, and that’s exactly what my position was, as a meeting planner. It was in San Francisco, which I loved being back home again in San Francisco, took BART, it was great, except that I went to work, my hours were like 8 to 5 or whatever, 9 to 5 I guess. I went to work at 7 in the morning and I didn’t leave until at least 7 at night and sometimes 8 or so because there was so much work and I couldn’t get enough help.

We were a quasi-public agency. We got our funds from the state, and so we were not a public agency, but we depended upon the state for money and we were short on revenue, so there was no way they could hire a helper, anyone to help me. I had two secretaries and two research assistants, and the executive director, and an attorney and me. We had to run all of these things, and it was my responsibility that the conferences be a success, and so that’s why I stayed. I just had to. Well, finally, it just got to be too much, so I quit.

I just sort of fell into the fun job, which was my last one, and it was supposed to be just for a few years, I was working. A travel agent, I lasted eighteen years. I didn’t quit until I was seventy-seven years old.

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Dunham: That was mostly to do to get the cheap travel.

2-00:36:15 Byrd: Well, no, it was fun. Not mostly, actually, it was, that helped, the fact that I could travel as much as I want because I didn’t make any money. It was very, very low pay, very, very low pay, and so you got the benefits of, in those days we got some free tickets even, and you got benefits and discounted trips. Travel agents should go on travel agent trips because they would offer these trips to just agents, and it’s a learning experience. It helped you learn about various areas to send your clients. So I believed in travel for that reason, but I’m just actually a traveler, so anyway, I did that, at first I had to, it paid so little that I also worked as the executive officer for the Contra Costa County Mayor’s Conference, I did that for five years. That was a part-time job, and I was supposed to be part time at the travel agency, but they kept calling me, could you help us out, could you come in Thursday, could you come in this day? I was supposed to work Monday, Wednesday and Friday. I found myself working five days a week, and running the Mayor’s Conference at the same time, so the Mayor’s Conference paid well and was not too much, I mean, it was easy enough for me to handle. So I decided at the end of five years of doing both jobs that I had to give one of them up, so I gave the one that paid the most money up because I just having so much fun as a travel agent.

Dunham: Yeah, well now that you’re truly retired, how do you stay busy since you’re been so active all of your life?

2-00:38:15 Byrd: Oh, gosh, my kids think I’m never home. Well, I have groups of friends, several groups that I belong to. One is a book club, of course, I have my book club. Then I have a group of play reading. What we do is we pick out one of us, there’s seven of us, and one will pick out a play and assign parts, and then we’d meet at each other’s homes, and we read the parts. So we read all these plays. Then also I go to the class that I was explaining to you, and go to the plays through that. I also have a walking group, and we go for coffee after walking, so my mornings are shot, most mornings.

Dunham: You live just a block from the Rosie the Riveter Memorial here—

2-00:39:10 Byrd: Yeah, I do and we walk in Point Richmond I shouldn’t say that, but we do. Actually, it’s a little bit less windy than it is here.

Dunham: So what’s your, do you have any perspective on contemporary Richmond and the park and all of that?

2-00:39:25 Byrd: Oh, I’m delighted. I’m delighted with the improvements that are being made. I think that our current Mayor is to be commended. She has done a lot, and I hope that she’s re-elected because she’s also a member of the Green party, and

Oral History Center, The Bancroft Library, University of California, Berkeley 43

she’s very conscious of the natural resources, saving our natural resources, and she puts out a lot of information along those lines, and she also has been instrumental in getting some solar panel businesses to come into Richmond and contribute to our treasury, which we need badly, and cleaning up neighborhoods and that sort of thing. I think that there’s finally some progress being made. It was stagnant for many, many, many years, and I see some progress being made.

Dunham: Well, is there anything else you’d like to add today on any—

2-00:40:27 Byrd: Oh, gosh, I just haven’t had the opportunity to rattle on and talk about myself so much in a long time. I says, “Oh, my gosh, I’m overdoing this.”

Dunham: Well, thank you, thank you very much, appreciate it.

2-00:40:43 Byrd: You’re very welcome, my pleasure, my pleasure.

[End of Interview]