Hargraves, Priscilla, 1992 October 15, Milton, Wisconsin:
Recorded interview and transcript available online.: Priscilla (Damrow) Hargraves was born in Janesville, Wisconsin on March 7, 1920. Her parents were of Scots-Irish and German ancestry. Ms. Hargraves attended local elementary and high schools, graduating in 1937. She worked as a mother's helper in Janesville for three years, and then spent a year at Milton College, a small liberal arts school near Janesville. She entered the University of Wisconsin at Madison in 1941, graduating with a B.S. in Institutional Management in 1944. She then entered the Women's Army Corps, serving as a ground instructor for pilots at the Army Air Force Base at Reno, Nevada. She married her first husband in December of that year, having met him in Reno. She left the Corps in June of 1945, and gave birth to the couple's first son in January of 1946. The marriage ended in divorce, and in 1948, Ms. Hargraves returned to her family's home in Janesville. Since then, she has worked in a variety of positions, most extensively as a home economist with the Wisconsin Extension Homemakers Council, and as a professor at the School of Family and Consumer Research at the University of Wisconsin, Madison. She married Vernon Hargraves in 1954. Ms. Hargraves remains active with WEHC, assisting at statewide meetings and with the compilation of
The Impact of Her Spirit, an oral history anthology of WEHC members.
We began the interview with Ms. Hargraves' recollections of rationing. She described campaigns for food conservation, the availability of food in rural communities, pooling rationing coupons with her housemates, and sending parcels to Great Britain. We then discussed her education, including the science classes she had been encouraged to take in high school, the financial support she received from her family, and her work as a lab and teaching assistant for physics classes.
Ms. Hargraves described her decision to enlist in the WACs, the ghostly atmosphere on campus as men were taken by the draft, and the efforts of women to maintain prewar standards of dress-- including drawing nylon seams on their legs. She related stories of the social life in campus, revolving around the USO and the activities sponsored by the Presbyterian Student Center. Ms. Hargraves discussed the tremendous support for the war among women at home, including gold star mothers, and campaigns to send knitting and food to the soldiers. She described her graduation from the university, including the sketch she received as a present from John Stuart Currie.
We moved on to her experience in the WACs, including basic training in Georgia, KP, and her glimpses of German POWs. After some advanced training, Ms. Hargraves was assigned as “link” instructor to pilot trainees in Reno, Nevada. She described her duties, including flying with trainees who were trying to flunk out of the program. She also described meeting her first husband; their hasty decision to marry before he was shipped out; the birth of their two sons soon after his return; and the couple's divorce. She recounted the sense of competence she got as an instructor at Reno, her displeasure at having to leave the position, the close ties among women who worked on the base, and WACs' resentment of civilian women who could date officers.
We concluded the interview by discussing the racial segregation Ms. Hargraves encountered in the South, as well as tensions between white Southerners and Northerners within the WACs. She explained the pleasure she gets from seeing people get along, and from feeling as if she is teaching them important skills. She credited her work in the WACs with introducing her to the world outside of marriage and childrearing. Finally, she reflected on the richness of her life, and the importance of doing for others.
