Foghorn Finds America

This is a photo of the ladies that worked at the Buick plant in Flint, Michigan in the middle 1940's. My mom is the 4th one from the right and my aunt LaVerne is the second from the left. They were the office staff, not the gals that worked on the lines obviously. We lived in Flint from 1944 when we left Chicago until 1950 when Ivan went to work for the Port Authority. We lived in Jersey near Fort Lee and he worked as a maintenance guy on the George Washington bridge and he made around $4000. dollars a year, not bad in those days. I bet they make like $70,000 dollars now. Im getting ahead of myself.

Mom and aunt Laverne started working at Buick when Lavernes husband Eddie died in France. I only met him once at the wedding and they were really young. he was drafted and died about 2 months after he got there. She was younger then mom by 6 years but they never told their ages so I never knew how old they really were until mom died in 1981. She was 62. So Laverne was 21 and mom was 27 in this picture.

Ivan worked at the Chevy plant as a welder which he really didn't know how to do but they hired him anyways. He was in his 3os and had a bad leg so they didn't draft him. He used to kid about it but I know it made him angry. His family was Polish and he wanted a piece of Nazi butt to kick for sure but he never got to. When Eddie died, he didn't talk for a week he was so mad.

Tomorrow I'll post on Ivan