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Interview with Edward and Shirley Gailliot
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| Mary Baumann: | Today is Saturday, November 13, 2004. This is Mary Baumann and today I will be interviewing Edward Gailliot of Alexandria, Virginia. Lets start with some biographical information. If you could provide me with your name, your full name, your parents’ names, your siblings’ names.
| | Edward Gailliot: | OK, we’ll start off with …. My father’s name was Charles Anthony Gailliot. He was born in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, in Braddock, in 1894. My mother was Margaret Auster and she was born in Switzerland, Bergen, Switzerland, in 1894 also. And she came to America approximately 1909, on a boat like many people did, and settled in Ellis Island. From there she went to Swissvale, which is located in Braddock, Pennsylvania. And it is there to this day. My siblings? Daughter?
| | Mary Baumann: | Yes. Now let me ask one question about your mother. Did your mother come by herself, or …?
| | Edward Gailliot: | No, they came as a family. They sold everything, like all the immigrants did, and she was picked up by some relative here in America. He didn’t show up right away. They were kind of worried they’d have to back. He did show up. So they went on from there. Got inspected like they do at Ellis Island. Went to Swissvale, Pennsylvania, in Pittsburgh.
| | Mary Baumann: | And, when did your parents come to Alexandria?
| | Edward Gailliot: | They were married in 1917. On the same day my father received his draft notice for World War I, but he was a pattern maker in the Navy Yard, in Washington, D.C. and so he got exempted from going into the service. And he moved to Washington, D.C. first. And then from there, they moved down to …. Actually, he was told by his brothers to go down to Virginia to look for a farm for the brothers. They wanted a farm down in Virginia. So he went down here in this Alexandria area and, about twelve miles south of Alexandria called Potter’s Hill, and looked and saw a farm that the brothers would be interested in. So they came on down and bought this farm for chickens. They raised chickens. And my father came down with his new bride. And that’s where they had their first child. They had their first children in actually Washington, D.C. in an apartment, and then they moved to this farm. And he lived there for approximately, until 1926. And then he moved to Del Ray, in Alexandria, Virginia. He used to commute from that farm to the Navy Yard everyday, twelve miles in a Model T. Then he moved to Del Ray, which was closer to the Navy Yard.
| | Mary Baumann: | And how many children did your parents have?
| | Edward Gailliot: | My father had four children. The first one was Helen. She was born in 1918. My brother, Charles A. He was born in 1919. And then Mary Margaret was born in 1920. Somehow I came along ten years later in 1929.
| | Mary Baumann: | You’re the baby of the family.
| | Edward Gailliot: | If you want to call a 75 year old man a baby, yes.
| | Mary Baumann: | Great. So we’ve go that down. Why don’t we take care of some more names - your children and your wife.
| | Edward Gailliot: | My wife’s name is Shirley Trice. She was born in Washington, D.C. also. She moved down to Colonial Beach and then moved back into Virginia, Alexandria area, in 1941.
| | Edward Gailliot: | And she moved to different places. She ended up in Del Ray also. We were married on May 8, 1954. I kind of picked that day because that’s when Germany surrendered to the Americans in World War II. So I will never forget May 8. We were married, like I said, in 1954, at St. Rita’s Catholic Church in Del Ray. We moved to apartments here and there and finally got a home out in Rose Hill, off of Franconia Rd. We had all of our children in Del Ray, at 116 Stewart Ave. The first child was named Anne Marie. She was born in 1955. And then we had Theresa Anne. She was born in 1956. And then Kenneth was born in 1960. And then we moved to our house out there in Rose Hill and we’ve been there ever since. We’ve been married fifty years plus.
| | Mary Baumann: | Great. The Stewart Ave. house is the same house that that you grew up in?
| | Edward Gailliot: | I actually was born in that house in 1929. My sister told me that she was quite surprised. I don’t know why I was born in the house except that they spread newspapers all over the place. That was supposed to be sterile at that time.
| | Mary Baumann: | So they really did do that?
| | Edward Gailliot: | Oh yes, oh yes.
| | Mary Baumann: | I thought you were joking!
| | Edward Gailliot: | My sister wanted a little baby doll to play with. So she prayed. And the priest told her to pray. And sure enough, I came along in about so many months later.
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| Edward Gailliot: | So I was born in the house, and it was called a Sears and Roebuck house by mail. Quite famous. They are all over the country. Montgomery Ward built the same kind of houses. They actually made communities, built whole communities, these Sears and Roebuck houses. They started out with barns and garages but they ended building houses. Each house is different. And all the material was delivered at the railroad station and you went down there with a flatbed truck and brought it up there. He spent the rest of his life working on that house. He finished most of it. That’s where he was most of the time, in the basement working on the house. But a Sears and Roebuck house - the cost of it was four thousand two hundred and some dollars. Prefab. Each piece of wood was numbered. Each two by four was numbered. He changed some things. Of course he was a pattern maker in the Navy Yard, so he changed the wooden porch to an all cement porch. And he added a window here and there. He had the pillars in the middle of the porch there. So it was a real big house, I thought, until I visited back here a couple years ago. It’s kind of small now, but it was big when I was a kid! And that’s where I was raised.
| | Mary Baumann: | What was it like to go back and see the house after all these years.
| | Edward Gailliot: | Very strange. I met the lady. Del Ray had some house parties. I took a model of the house I [had] built to that party. The woman invited me into the house. Naturally it brought back very good memories because I played all my life. That’s where I was raised during World War II, and fought the battle of the Pacific in the back yard. [I] had my toy airplanes. I had a place out in the backyard, which was called Wake Island. I went through the whole battle. The Japanese captured it, and then I recaptured it, and this went like that until I went to high school. I got kind of old to be playing guns. That’s where I was born and raised and fought World War II. My brother went into the service. He was in the Signal Corps, telephone company. He went in the 13th Air Force, which is kind of an omen, because 13 means unlucky. He survived the war. He built a model aircraft, PBY Catalina boat, very small but it was solid model balsa wood. He wouldn’t let me play with it because he said I’d break it. But he wrote a letter home to my mother during the war and said, “Go ahead, let him play with it”, because he didn’t know whether he’d come back or not. It was a beautiful model; I’ll always remember that. He passed away in 1989 after he retired from the telephone company.
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| Pamela Cressey: | So you were both with the telephone company?
| | Edward Gailliot: | Yes, it was a family affair. Always was. I used to march by, when I went to GW High School and played in the high school band, I used to march by the telephone company building there on Mt. Vernon Ave. He’d be up in the window waving and I’d wave back to him and beat the drums a couple of times. He worked for them in 1939. He went to Bliss Electrical School in Washington, D.C., which was an electrical school. He got his training there. Between him (sic) and I was (you can’t see this on the tape) take these fingers and separate them that far apart and that how we were. In other words, we were so far apart. He had the brains and I had the brawn. He was very intelligent. He actually retired from that building, the telephone building on Mt. Vernon Ave., 1316 Mt. Vernon Ave. He spent 35 years, approximately, there. Usually you get transferred around in the telephone company, but he stayed in that building the whole time he was in his career. It’s a long story how I ended up in the telephone company, but I ended up there in 1951. So we both worked for the telephone company, which was a family affair, for many families.
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| Mary Baumann: | Did you say how many years it took your father to, or how long it took your father to build that house?
| | Edward Gailliot: | He built it pretty soon, 1926. By 1931, 32 it was all completed inside. Some rooms were not completed all the way. Actually, it was a five bedroom house upstairs. He made it into two large bedrooms and two small bedrooms, which the building was supposed to be. He enlarged two of the rooms. He raised all the family there. I slept with my brother. My sisters had private rooms. (Phone is ringing in the background.) He went in the service. Of course, I had the bedroom to myself.
| | Mary Baumann: | Yes, let me press “Pause”.
(Mrs. Gailliot is talking on the phone in the background.)
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| Edward Gailliot: | I went from storekeeper to frame hop, working in the Central Office. And then from there, my brother worked upstairs and I worked downstairs. I saw my future wife walking down the street; [whistles] whistled at her a couple of times. By mistake, I guess, - I don’t know - I ended up marrying her. And then from frame hop I went to the line gang, which was kind of odd. Because here I was, kind of in a shirt and a tie, and you go in the line gang today, I say “My God, I’m not dressed for it.” But that’s the way I went. I’m glad I did because they taught me how to climb poles. Those spikes and everything, get your foot in that pole and as you straightened up, you cut out as they called it, slide right down the pole. So they taught me how to climb poles; respect the pole. And then, from there, I went to government installation in 1956, which was at the Navy Annex, which is still over there in Arlington, but they are going to tear that down. We covered Navy Annex, (inaudible), T7, temporary buildings, there by the airport. That’s where the army was before they tore that down. But I got tired of putting in service in these government buildings. Some general would come in and change his mind. “I don’t want that over there; I want that over here.” In the telephone company everything is by specification. Every cable, every tack was so many inches apart and inspected. So I got tired of that. I said, “I want to go outside. I want to ride by a house and see my line going in to the house and see it still there ten years later.” So from 1961, when I moved out to Rose Hill, to 1971, I worked outside, installation and repair. I loved repair because that’s a challenge trying to find troubles. You were on duty 24 hours a day. Everybody worked on Saturdays on duty 24 hours a day whether you wanted to or not. They’d give you call outs for out of service. I got call outs at 2 o’clock in the morning. Of course you get overtime for that. Call outs go out and get them serviced that night. So I enjoyed that very much. I was getting kind of old to climb poles. In 1971 I got transferred to test board. I didn’t know whether I wanted to be sitting down in one position all day long. I enjoyed that very much. I remember climbing poles and waiting for the test board to answer your call. Can I touch on this at all?
| | Mary Baumann: | Yes, go ahead.
| | Pamela Cressey: | Enjoy
| | Edward Gailliot: | There’s an old joke about calling the test board and waiting for it to answer. Because one day this kid come (sic) running into the house and he says, “Mom, Mom.” She said, “What?” “This man out there on the pole is talking to Jesus Christ.” She says, “What do you mean, he’s talking to Jesus Christ.” “Well, come on out and listen.” And she ran out the back door and she listened and the man on the pole would say, “Jesus Christ, won’t you answer me!” Waiting on the test board to answer. So I remembered that. Many times I climbed in the storm and the rain and everything, freezing rain coming down. Going down there and freezing to death. I remembered that. And when I got on the test board, every time that phone rang, I picked it up right away. The guys on the outside noticed that. If I went on a coffee break or something like that, “Where were you? The phone rang and rang.” “I was on a coffee break.” “Thought so, because nobody answered the phone.” I remembered what it was like outside
| | Mary Baumann: | Because you knew.
| | Edward Gailliot: | Yes. I worked with the cableman. I could clear troubles on the test board. People would call in and say, “It’s noisy on my phone.” I’d say, “What does it sound like?“ “Sounds like frying bacon or something.” I said, “Something like [makes a sizzling sound].” “That’s it. That’s the noise.” I said, “That was me making the noise. I know what it is. It’s a transmitter. Take your phone and bang it on the table.” She says, “What?” “Bang it on the table.” I heard it [sizzling sound] cracking and banging on the table. She said, “It’s clear as a bell.” “That’s right. The modules in that transmitter get packed from the moisture from speaking in the phone transmitter. It gets packed and causes that static.”
| | Mary Baumann: | So do you think you became a really familiar face in the neighborhood or did you go to a wide range area?
| | Edward Gailliot: | Yes, I covered northern Virginia , well, Alexandria. Of course I covered my own area where I was born and raised, and I loved that. Going to the schools and everything. Walking in there like a big shot, with a pair of tools hanging on your side. Then I worked in Mt. Vernon area, in the rich (inaudible). That’s where one colonel told me one time, “You know, you all got a monopoly on the telephone service around here.” “What do you mean?”, I says (sic). He says (sic), “You only got one service. I can’t bring anything in and have another telephone.” I says (sic), “You don’t see two gas lines going down the street. You don’t see two power poles going down the street. They’re all controlled by the state corporation. Your service is free except for service, but repair service is covered.” But I never forgot what he said that time. And now, it’s not the same now and never will be. Anybody can put telephones in. But I was dedicated. I loved shooting troubles outside. And then I got transferred to the test board, and like I said, I loved that. Within ten years, from 1971 to 1981, everything was obsolete. The test board was obsolete. Why pay me $600 a week when you can hire some girl off the street, do the same thing, push the buttons. Of course, the cable men didn’t like that because they didn’t know …. “Dial tone, what’s that?” ”Ground on the tip side.” What do you mean “Ground on the tip side”? So they didn’t know the lingo of the telephone company. That was progress. Then I was moved around because they were cutting back a little bit. They never fired anybody in the telephone company, but they were moving you around a lot. I ended up at Columbia Pike, Arlington. I saw the picture on the wall and so I got out in 1986. I retired early but I had 35 years service. So I kept a lot of the benefits and everything. I enjoyed it. I think all the telephone men say that. We have these luncheons once in a while. We say we worked at the best time in the world at the telephone company. I’d say from 1950 on, up to 1980, at least. Dedicated. You were a dedicated person. I kept my truck so clean and spotless that they kidded me about going to the Flamingo Car Wash. That’s how clean I kept my truck. I was in my truck more than I was in my bed at home. Working overtime and everything. I knew where everything in that truck was. I had everything - a change of clothes, underwear, everything else. I had everything on that truck, in case I got wet or anything. Like I said, I kept it waxed and everything. They kidded me about that, but at least I had a dedicated type of thing. In fact, I won a new truck one time when they got some new trucks in because I keep my truck so neat.
| | Mary Baumann: | They knew you’d keep good care of it.
| | Edward Gailliot: | Yes. I enjoyed it outside very much. I enjoyed that work. It was a challenge shooting troubles. Where do you start? Do you start from the house? You start from the pole? Or do you start in the middle? Eliminate. Process of elimination. You get a ground hum on here. You don’t get the ground hum on that side, it means that ground hum is going this way. But I tell some people when I’m talking on the phone, “You’ve got a terrible ground hum on there.” “What do you mean?” “Never mind.”
| | Mary Baumann: | And you talked about how people really appreciated …(inaudible)
| | Edward Gailliot: | Oh yes. Anytime ….
| | Mary Baumann: | … no matter what (inaudible) …
| | Edward Gailliot: | “Telephone repair.” “Come on in.” I never had the opportunity to have [people] clad in hardly anything on answer[ing] the door, but a lot of guys talked about that.
| | Mary Baumann: | That that had happened to them?
| | Edward Gailliot: | Oh, yes. It happened to them. “Not in my lifetime, though.”
| | Mary Baumann: | [Laughing]
| | Edward Gailliot: | It did happen, I’m sure. You had to be careful. You were bonded. One time I left my pipe there by mistake. I went back to get my pipe and then I left. I noticed something was different when she crawled across the bed when I was working on the connecting block in the bedroom, down in the corner. She said, “You remind me of my doctor, family doctor.” I said, “Really?” So I left, got out of there. The boss said she called up and complained (inaudible) all that kind of stuff. They knew what the circumstances were.
| | Pamela Cressey: | It didn’t go anywhere?
| | Edward Gailliot: | No. Some guys … they had telephone detectives, guys that worked checking you out all the time. Like, at pay phones, they sometimes, down at Fort Belvoir, specially overflow coins by servicemen. And the telephone company marked those coins. Say you had a marked coin. You had to take that coin, put it in there, and have the operator collect it. Some guys kept the money. Temptation. Kind of a trap like. Fifty cents for a cup of coffee. They were strict on you. And, like I say, we were all run by AT&T; we had spec books a mile long in the office. Anything in the telephone company was put in was done by specs, specifications. Very proud to work for the company.
| | Pamela Cressey: | You had to be a really sharp person, I think, to work for the phone company. To do a good job. There was a lot of problem solving and lots of knowledge.
| | Edward Gailliot: | Mine was just normal telephone usage. PBX men. They worked on switchboards. They were sharp. They could shoot troubles on the switchboard and find troubles. My brother was the best in the world. He’d take blueprints, circuitry blueprints, in the telephone office, step equipment, relays. And he’d run and shoot that trouble, ring to ground, ring to ground, ground to ring, ring to ground. And lay it on the floor. They guys told me this. Run that trouble. “There it is, right there. That is supposed to be on the tip side.” So he was a great troubleshooter. He was a switchman. Like I said, he had the brain and I had the muscles. [Charles A. Gailliot, server in the 13th Air Force in the Pacific, World War II.]
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| Edward Gailliot: | God rest his soul. He really liked me. He used to take me up to the firehouse in Del Ray, Number 2. Number 2 firehouse, on the handlebars, on the bicycle all the time.
| | Mary Baumann: | When you were a child?
| | Edward Gailliot: | Yes. I never got a new bicycle by the way. I always got hand-me-downs. You always got hand-me-downs. Balloon tire, old bicycle. But it worked.
| | Pamela Cressey: | So you must have ridden your bike all over Del Ray?
| | Edward Gailliot: | Oh, yes. I used to see girlfriends you know. I forget what you call them back then, when I was ten, eleven, twelve ….
| | Pamela Cressey: | What did you all do when you were kids? How did you spend your time?
| | Edward Gailliot: | Build forts in empty lots and trees. No girls were allowed. Except we used to play war all the time. That’s all we had - war, at that time. And you always get shot. The girls were always nurses. Always got shot in the same place. Right here. [Pointing to his mid-section.]
(Mrs. Gailliot finishes her phone conversation.)
| | Mary Baumann: | [Laughing] In your stomach!
| | Pamela Cressey: | And where did you get all of the materials to build the forts?
| | Edward Gailliot: | From the Safeway store. Safeway used to be called Sanitary. Used to be called Sanitary. And one was in Del Ray there, right on the corner of Stewart Ave, further on down, about the middle of the block, where Harwell Cleaners were at one time. And Sanitary, Safeway was down there. And they had crates. Always brought the fruit in crates. And you’d break them up. Raise cane about “Kids, get out of there.” And you’d take those crates …. It was a terrible looking fort but it was up in the tree. You had empty lots. That’s what you grew up with. Empty lots. Growing up with weeds and everything. But there’s (sic) no empty lots any more anywhere for the kids to pretend.
| | Pamela Cressey: | And you had a lot of freedom, didn’t you?
| | Edward Gailliot: | Oh, certainly. And you make believe. You pretended. You pretended. I played baby dolls then. The girl next door, Evelyn Gallahan, I played baby dolls, I was the husband, whatever that was at the time. And hopscotch. I played hopscotch. I loved hopscotch.
| | Pamela Cressey: | Did you draw it on with chalk on the sidewalk?
| | Edward Gailliot: | Yes. If you won a block, you put your initials, you couldn’t step in that block you know. Hopscotch. [We] played Monopoly. And that was very famous, Monopoly, during the depression. That’s why they made Monopoly. Nobody had any money. Monopoly is about money. Its everything about money. Lots, buy buildings, keep on building, Park Place, Boardwalk, all fake. You had paper money People didn’t have any money. And Evelyn Gallahan, my next door neighbor (she was an older girl than I was). She moved away like all the girls.
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| Edward Gailliot: | Oh, and another thing. In Del Ray. Potomac Yards. You had whistles, change of shifts. You had 4, 4:30, 8, 8:30, 12, 12:30. And my mother always used to say, “Be home by the second whistle.”
| | Mary Baumann: | So you measured time by …
| | Edward Gailliot: | [Makes a deep whistle sound.] That’s the whistle. It was a deeper tone than that. And “ the Hump” at Potomac Yards. Where they took the cars brought them in and put them up to the hump, loosened them and separate them. Different cars to different places going. This was the main cog, Potomac Yards, going south. That’s why it was so essential to World War II. Guys used to loose their legs all the time.
| | Mary Baumann: | The workers there?
| | Edward Gailliot: | Yes.
| | Pamela Cressey: | Could you hear that in the yards?
| | Edward Gailliot: | In Potomac Yards you could hear the Yard setting up, trains going south. Oh, you could hear [makes a sound like brakes screeching] the brakes when they hit together. You had yard engines, (inaudible) My brother-in-law was a stoker on one of the engines. He couldn’t hear. He had a hearing aid so he didn’t get in the service. You’d hear that all the time. My mother said the soot, the black soot …. There was always black smoke over Potomac Yards. That’s when they used coal on it. If it was white smoke you knew it was steam. You were OK with that.
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| Edward Gailliot: | And, of course, the airport at that time was called Hoover Washington Airport. That’s where the Pentagon is built today. You could smell the airport before you got there because of the high octane gas and tarmac they called it. Because they had dirt and tar they put on it. Oil. Hoover Airport. It had one runway. And they had a flagman. Because Ft. Myer Rd. used to cross the runway. So they had a flagman there to stop the traffic [makes the sound of a roaring engine.] when the airplane would take. They had a stop light there. It was a matter of who could beat the light, beat the traffic light before the plane got there. [Makes the sound of a roaring engine.] Beat the light. The old story is that FDR, Franklin Roosevelt - he dreamed there was a horrible crash there, I mean at Hoover Airport. So that’s why they built National. That broke my heart. My brother - who served the, I think it was the Washington Post, or the Alexandria Gazette, I don’t know which - he got some free tickets to ride on the Goodyear blimp at that time, which was stationed at Hoover Airport. Take you around the city. He got a ride on it. The old Ford tri-motors, the three engine aircraft. My father took me and let me sit in one. Wrong way Corrigan -the pilot that flew across the ocean by mistake. They took his license away. I remember him coming in to the airport with his (inaudible) boots, waving to everybody. Took his license away. Wiley Post, when he came to Washington. The first DC-4E they called it, four engine transport tricycle landing gear. It was beautiful - landed at Hoover Airport, I remember that. By the way Douglas sold it to Japan before the war started. They only had one, but they sold it to Japan when they built National Airport. That broke my heart.
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| Mary Baumann: | Were there a lot of railroad workers in the community you grew up in?
| | Edward Gailliot: | Oh yes. Half of Del Ray was (sic) the railroad workers.
| | Mary Baumann: | And where did your father work?
| | Edward Gailliot: | At the Navy Yard. Washington Navy Yard. He used to commute. Years ago, when he lived on the farm, and then he moved to Del Ray to get closer to his work. When my father worked at Washington Navy Yard, he had the carpool way back before the carpool was invented around here. He took guys to work, picked them up, and he got an extra gas rationing. You had an “A” for regular, and “B” for something else, and “C”. You got “C”, you got more gas. He got an “A” and a “C” card. Stuck it on the windshield. One of the hardest things in my whole life was, when he died, on the job at the Navy Yard, I was eighteen, I had to go over there and pick his car up. And I had to take the workers home. Poor guys. They had a way to go to work every morning and all of a sudden my father died. Had to find some other way. That’s what he did. He had …. When he had a vacation or a day off, he had to pick the guys up in the morning, take them to work, come back home, paint the house, (Sears Roebuck house) he had to ride back to Washington again pick guys up, take them back home. That was his job. He couldn’t let that go. I don’t know what he did on vacation. Probably had somebody volunteer to do that.
| | Pamela Cressey: | Did you have vacations?
| | Edward Gailliot: | Yes, we went to what they called the Pattern Makers’ Picnic on Bay Ridge in Chesapeake Bay. I got pictures of that. We enjoyed that when I was a kid.
| | Mary Baumann: | Why was it the “Pattern Makers’ Picnic?”
| | Edward Gailliot: | It was the Pattern Makers union. They had a picnic during the summer. Bay Ridge. Beverly Beach they called it.
| | Mary Baumann: | So this was an annual thing?
| | Edward Gailliot: | Yes.
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| Mary Baumann: | Now with your siblings being older, considerably older than you, you ran around with schoolmates?
| | Edward Gailliot: | Yes, my friends, boyfriends I call them. [To Shirley Gailliot] What’s the matter?
| | Shirley Gailliot: | … fraternity. You did out there in Arlington that night. Remember when they put ketchup all over the guys?
| | Edward Gailliot: | Oh, that was in high school. Boyfriends back in those days. We had our old tin WWI helmets on, but it was actually made of tin. I got pictures of that too.
| | Mary Baumann: | Do you still see some of those people? What are their names?
| | Edward Gailliot: | No. Some of them passed away. My best friend has moved away to Florida. We’ve all gone our different ways. My high school friends. I do have a friend that I was in the first grade with that I still see.
| | Mary Baumann: | What’s his name?
| | Edward Gailliot: | Jimmy Clark. James Clark. He got a home down off Laverne Ave in Del Ray. His father built some homes there. His father was Fruit Growers Express, I think, or something like that. He was in the railroad too. He was a big union man.
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| Pamela Cressey: | Was Del Ray pretty much a Democratic town?
| | Edward Gailliot: | What do you mean by “Democratic?” You mean “Political?”
| | Pamela Cressey: | Yes.
| | Edward Gailliot: | I have no idea.
| | Pamela Cressey: | Because, as a kid, you didn’t think about it one way or another.
| | Edward Gailliot: | My father, believe it or not, didn’t like Roosevelt. Some people didn’t like him; some people did. He said, “He’s going to get us into war.” That’s what happened. We don’t think he did it on purpose. People had their own political beliefs. Across the street from us was Mr. Prysizenick. He was a “White Russian.” They called him that because of the type of people in Russia at that time. White Russians were like the Czar’s people. He had to get out of Russia. He was very nice. They were very to themselves; that’s the way the Russians were. They were very nice. Philip passed away too. He was my boy friend growing up.
| | Mary Baumann: | That was their child?
Edward Gailliot Yes.
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| Edward Gailliot: | Yes. Neighbors, very cosmopolitan. They didn’t get too friendly. I don’t know why. You were friendly to a point, because everybody would move away eventually. Change or something.
(Gap in the tape 5 to 6)
| | Edward Gailliot: | Towns are very close. Went to my mother’s, I mean to my sister’s funeral yesterday. We went to the nursing home and everything. People are so much nicer away from here. They’ve got the time. At the nursing home, everybody spoke to you; the townspeople talked where everything is. Very slow, and like I say, you move away from here, you’ll live longer. Absolutely will live longer, I think. That’s my perception anyway. They’re just friendly. Around here too cutthroat and too get-out-of-my-way.
| | Mary Baumann: | And you feel like it’s been that way, even when you were growing up? Or it’s changed?
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| Edward Gailliot: | I had a lot of toys because I was spoiled, unfortunately. And all the guys - we used to yell out in the morning. The first kid that would see me would say, “First Choose.” I always had “first choose” because they were my toys. You say, “First Choose.” “OK” Bobby would come up later. “Second Choose.” “All right” And that’s how we played all day long.
| | Pamela Cressey: | What kinds of toys did you have?
| | Edward Gailliot: | We had heavy metal toys. If you dropped them on your foot you’d break your foot. They were all cast iron or something like that. In fact, I have a picture of me holding, at three years old, holding a Lockeed Vega, a metal plane, with a Lord Fauntleroy suit. So I loved airplanes since day one. I always loved them. By the way, I did see the Hindenburg fly over Washington in 1936.
| | Mary Baumann: | Oh, that must have been interesting.
| | Edward Gailliot: | People say it never came to Washington. I say, “Yes, it did. In 1936, in October.” I have proof of it. Flew down with the big shots. It didn’t land in Washington. My father says, “Come out here on the back porch. Look over there towards Washington.” Then you could see Washington from the back porch then. No trees. No houses. There it was. The Goodyear blimp was flying along side of it. And the Hindenburg was this long and the Goodyear blimp at that time that was about as long as the tip of this pencil. [Makes the purring sound of an engine.] Guttural engines. Beautiful. Silver giant. By the way, I give lectures on zeppelins. I might as well stick that in there. I fell in love with them then, but of course my life went another way and I finally ended up coming back to them.
| | Pamela Cressey: | And that’s why you became a docent then …
| | Edward Gailliot: | Oh yes.
| | Pamela Cressey: | … at the Air and Space Museum? Because you’ve always loved airplanes.
| | Edward Gailliot: | I’ve always loved airplanes. The old airplanes. To me, a jet is nothing more than two vacuum cleaners on the side of a fuselage. [Makes the whistling sound of an approaching jet.] No personality whatsoever. You get a piston engine starting up, [makes the putt-putt sound of an engine starting] starting up, coughing and spitting and blue smoke, that’s power.
| | Mary Baumann: | Now, have you been out to the new hangar that they have out there?
| | Edward Gailliot: | No, I haven’t. That’s a sore thing with me right now. They closed the balloon and airship gallery at the Air and Space. That’s what I loved. That’s history. You got in the air with a hot air balloon in 1783, not an airplane. To me, that’s part of history.
| | Pamela Cressey: | So, did they move that out to the new one?
| | Edward Gailliot: | No.
| | Mary Baumann: | They just closed it.
| | Edward Gailliot: | Closed it. They moved the World War I gallery in there. I said, “Oh, they’ll open it up again.” Another balloon and airship gallery. Never did. And they don’t intend to either. I have no desire to go out to the new Air and Space. I’ve seen enough of them. I took my grandson, the one with cerebral palsy, flying down at Nags Head. Open cockpit. That little sucker went in there with me and sat in the cockpit right beside me. I’ve got pictures of it. Goggles as big as his head. And it was so loud. He had his ear muffs. I said, “Don’t spit out the cockpit because it will go right around and hit ….” He had a lot of guts to get in that thing, didn’t he? That little kid!
| | Shirley Gailliot: | Five years old.
| | Edward Gailliot: | Five years old. It was a 1941 Wahco airplane. Two winger. Open cockpit. They had other airplanes there. They had a Cessna, enclosed cockpit you know. No, no, you want to fly, you get in an open cockpit with the wind blowing in your face. That’s the way to go. I’ve done it. I used to fly to Baileys Crossroads, when they had the airport out there. I took lessons. On Good Friday, 1953, I was flying for an hour and Charlie Ben, who is down in Richmond now, he says, “Stop the airplane.” I stopped it. He got out and took his pillow out. Closed the door and says, “Take it up and land it three times.” I says, “What? I thought you were flying it all the time I was learning.” “No, you’re ready.” There it was. I took off. And once you take off you can’t go [makes a sound] I don’t think I like this. You’ve got to come down.
| | Mary Baumann: | Can’t do that!
| | Edward Gailliot: | That was Good Friday, 1953. I soloed. I’ve done it. I can land that casket now with a smile on my face. I flew an airplane. Try it sometime, you want to feel free. I flew for a while, cross country and solo, and all that kind of stuff. But I didn’t get my private because I got married. But I’ve done it.
| | Pamela Cressey: | You were brave just to ….
| | Edward Gailliot: | Oh, yes! I went home that night. I was single, naturally. [I] went home that night and told my mother, “Mom, Mom, I soloed.” She says, “I didn’t know you could sing!”
| | Edward Gailliot: | “No, no, nevermind.”
| | Pamela Cressey: | She didn’t know you were taking lessons?
| | Edward Gailliot: | That was a celebration. Used to cut your shirttail off. Pilots used to cut their shirttail off. Couldn’t drink. Couldn’t celebrate that way. I kept my log book. I cherish that thing like it was my first love.
| | Pamela Cressey: | Good for you. Good for you.
| | Edward Gailliot: | Tail draggers, they call it. Tail wheels. Don’t even know where you’re flying until you get the tail up. Look ahead. It’s a great thrill. It’s so crowded up there now, you have to take ground crew school, which is good. I didn’t have a radio. Got lost flying over York, Pennsylvania. What are you going to do? Pull up and ask, “Which way is York, Pennsylvania?” You go by landmarks - water tanks, barns, roads, bridges, ….
| | Pamela Cressey: | So, if it’s bad weather …?
| | Edward Gailliot: | I don’t fly in bad weather. The kind of plane I flew you don’t fly in bad weather. Unless you’ve got instruments and that kind of stuff. These people that fly in bad weather, they’ve got to know what they’re doing. You’ve got to know what you’re doing.
| | Mary Baumann: | Because you can’t see anything.
| | Edward Gailliot: | Planes are very good. They’ve got the stuff to fly in bad weather. Flying blind, all by instruments.
| | Pamela Cressey: | I understand they used to land planes on Shuter’s Hill, where the Masonic Memorial is?
| | Edward Gailliot: | Well, that was a long time ago. That’s when the Wright Brothers flew around. To my knowledge, they never flew any aircraft near the Temple. Now, you had Baileys Crossroads (that was where I flew out of), Beacon Airport, top of Route 1, and Hybla Valley, down where the shopping centers are now. That was Hybla Valley, another airport. That’s where they were going to build the zeppelin base, by the way. I didn’t know that but my father told me that. Because it was down in the valley and the winds wouldn’t be blowing. More control.
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| Edward Gailliot: | Do you want to interview …?
| | Mary Baumann: | Yes. Did you and your wife go to the same school?
| | Shirley Gailliot: | No.
| | Mary Baumann: | What school did you go to?
| | Shirley Gailliot: | I went to St. Mary’s Parochial and then St. Mary’s Academy.
| | Mary Baumann: | And tell us about growing up. You moved to Alexandria when you were eight? Is that right?
| | Shirley Gailliot: | Yes, I was eight years old. 1941 we moved here. And I lived on Maple St. And then the people that rented the house to us got divorced. The wife wanted the house. We had to move. Then we moved down on Duke. St. into St. Paul’s Rectory. It was during the war and the Red Cross was looking for a big house. That was a thirteen room house. So the Red Cross asked if they found us a house, if we would mind moving and let them have that. So we moved to Arlington. Then we were fortunate enough that the family got a divorce again, and the wife wanted the house. So we had to move again, and we moved to Mt. Vernon Ave, next to where Bowman’s Drug Store used to be. And then I think my parents got tired of moving so they finally bought a house on Alexandria Ave.
| | Mary Baumann: | And that’s where you stayed?
| | Shirley Gailliot: | So, I grew up on Alexandria Ave.
| | Mary Baumann: | Yes, I think you gave your name.
| | Pamela Cressey: | What was the address of the house?
| | Shirley Gailliot: | 200 East Alexandria Ave. Right there on the corner of Wayne St. and Alexandria.
| | Mary Baumann: | Now I interviewed the Sullivans and I think they were on Alexandria Ave.
| | Shirley Gailliot: | Yes, neighbors. And in my neighborhood there were a lot of kids, so we all knew everybody. And if you didn’t behave yourself, before you got home, your parents knew it.
| | Mary Baumann: | They already knew.
| | Shirley Gailliot: | Yes, they already knew it when you walked in the house if you were bad. So, we grew up around there. We had a real good time.
| | Mary Baumann: | Were the streets dirt, dirt roads, or paved, or … ?
| | Shirley Gailliot: | No, they were paved.
| | Mary Baumann: | Paved.
| | Shirley Gailliot: | I remember sometimes at nighttime my dad would get a big trash can from back there and build us a fire in it. We had a fire outside. When it snowed, Wayne St. was a hill, and we used to sleigh ride on the hill at night with the fire out there. That gave us a light, and everything we needed. So we used to play out there all the time. I grew up with mostly boys in the neighborhood. We played softball with them, and basketball, roller skate, hockey, and so forth, out there. Red light, all kinds of games.
| | Edward Gailliot: | Tell them how girls played basketball in your time.
| | Shirley Gailliot: | OK. I played in the city league and I also played in the church league. Basketball. Back then you had six girls on a team. And you had three that were forwards. They did all the shooting. And you had three that were guards. The center line - the three forwards couldn’t go across that and the three guards couldn’t go across that. And only the forwards on the team got to shoot the ball.
| | Edward Gailliot: | No running up and down the court.
| | Mary Baumann: | You spent your time on half the court? Wherever you were.
| | Shirley Gailliot: | Yes. Up and down the court.
| | Pamela Cressey: | What was your uniform like?
| | Shirley Gailliot: | It was like a dress that came down almost to your knees. And then you had tights underneath. Bloomer tights underneath. And that’s what we played in. It wasn’t like they wear now. Like I said, I played in the city league, and I played in the church league.
| | Pamela Cressey: | You really enjoyed it?
| | Shirley Gailliot: | Yes.
| | Pamela Cressey: | Were you pretty good?
| | Shirley Gailliot: | I played guard.
| | Pamela Cressey: | You were guard.
| | Shirley Gailliot: | And my sister was over six foot tall, so she played the forward.
| | Mary Baumann: | What is your sister’s name?
| | Shirley Gailliot: | Peggy.
| | Mary Baumann: | Peggy.
| | Shirley Gailliot: | Yes. She played, she was the center forward and I was the center guard. We played in the Armory down on Royal St. That’s where we played basketball.
| | Edward Gailliot: | Alexandria Club
| | Pamela Cressey: | Was that pretty new at that time for girls to be playing basketball?
| | Shirley Gailliot: | I guess so. I don’t really know. I only moved up here when I was eight years old so I don’t know what really happened before then where girls were concerned playing. And also, my class at St. Mary’s Elementary School was the first class to get eighth grade. We started a year before the public schools did with the eighth grade. Some of the kids in the seventh grade with me, if they wanted to, they transferred to GW High School. They skipped the eighth grade. Like I say, St. Mary’s was the first year when I was there they got the eighth grade.
| | Pamela Cressey: | Did you graduate from GW?
| | Shirley Gailliot: | No, I went to St. Mary’s Academy. I didn’t go to GW.
| | Pamela Cressey: | All the way through?
| | Shirley Gailliot: | Yes.
| | Pamela Cressey: | Now, how … I understand if you were in Catholic schools, your teachers were very good but pretty strict?
| | Shirley Gailliot: | They were very strict. I guess I was lucky because I got to - everyday at lunch time - I got to go to the bakery and get their dessert for the night.
| | Mary Baumann: | Oh, so you had a special place in their hearts!
| | Shirley Gailliot: | [Laughing] So I was a little lucky.
| | Pamela Cressey: | Which bakery?
| | Shirley Gailliot: | We went to Schumann’s.
| | Pamela Cressey: | Schumann’s.
| | Shirley Gailliot: | Also too, if Schumann’s didn’t have what they wanted, there was a bakery, and I can’t think of the name of it, that was up on King St. further. I think it was, I want to say Cameron St., but it might have been the street up from Cameron. It was on King St. It was up there, I think. But most of the time we went to Schumann’s.
| | Pamela Cressey: | What things, do you remember in Schumann’s what they made, what did you like the best?
| | Shirley Gailliot: | Jelly roll.
| | Pamela Cressey: | The jelly roll.
| | Shirley Gailliot: | That’s what we got most of the time.
| | Mary Baumann: | How did you get that job, to go do that, to go get their dessert?
| | Shirley Gailliot: | I don’t really know.
| | Mary Baumann: | You just lucked out.
| | Shirley Gailliot: | I don’t really know because I wasn’t an angel in school. I don’t know how I got that job.
| | Mary Baumann: | Do you remember the names of some of your other schoolmates? Was it mainly the same girls throughout?
| | Shirley Gailliot: | Yes, mostly.
| | Mary Baumann: | Do you remember any names?
| | Shirley Gailliot: | Yes, there was Joan Berio, Virginia Duncan, Pat Kilpatrick, and Barbara Fogle, and Lillian Kukay. I went with Shady Shelbourne, Bobby Barry, Bobby Bell, Billy Green, …
| | Mary Baumann: | Did a lot of the girls live close by in the area?
| | Shirley Gailliot: | In parochial school, it was boys and girls. In high school it was just an all girls school. Yes, we all lived around.
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| Pamela Cressey: | Now the black kids went to separate schools? Right?
| | Shirley Gailliot: | Yes. They had Parker-Gray High School.
| | Pamela Cressey: | Now did you interact much?
| | Shirley Gailliot: | No.
| | Pamela Cressey: | Not even in the neighborhoods?
| | Shirley Gailliot: | They didn’t even live in your neighborhood.
| | Pamela Cressey: | They didn’t live in your neighborhood.
| | Edward Gailliot: | The lived off of Henry St., in that area, in Alexandria.
| | Shirley Gailliot: | They lived down there on Patrick St., Oronoco, and all in that area down in there.
| | Edward Gailliot: | They had a colored theater down there, called the Capitol.
| | Shirley Gailliot: | Yes, they did, the Capitol Theater. That was on the corner of Henry St. and …. I can’t think of the other name of the street. Henry St. and something.
| | Pamela Cressey: | Like Queen?
| | Edward Gailliot: | Queen. Queen.
| | Shirley Gailliot: | Yes, it might have been Queen.
| | Pamela Cressey: | Is that an area they call “Uptown”? When we’ve interviewed black people they have referred to it as “Uptown.”
| | Shirley Gailliot: | Maybe, yes.
| | Edward Gailliot: | Downtown would be lower Alexandria
| | Pamela Cressey: | So you really just had no interaction at all, really, two separate worlds?
| | Shirley Gailliot: | No. Not where I lived there wasn’t any.
| | Shirley Gailliot: | Weren’t any blacks in that area.
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| Mary Baumann: | What was the theater on Mt. Vernon? I forget what it was called.
| | Edward Gailliot: | The Palm.
| | Shirley Gailliot: | Palm Theater. Also the Vernon, of course.
| | Edward Gailliot: | The Vernon is where I worked.
| | Shirley Gailliot: | The Palm Theater was good. That’s where all the kids used to go on Saturday afternoon.
| | Mary Baumann: | So you have a lot of good memories of that?
| | Shirley Gailliot: | Oh, yes. You went to the Palm.
| | Edward Gailliot: | Ten, ten, eleven cents. Eleven cents! One cent tax!
| | Pamela Cressey: | What cross streets? Generally what block are we talking about on Mt. Vernon?
| | Shirley Gailliot: | Oh, just about 3 blocks from Hume Ave. down to about Windsor Ave.
| | Edward Gailliot: | The theater was there, then it was a men’s shop.
| | Shirley Gailliot: | Yes, where (inaudible) Men’s Shop was where the theater was.
| | Edward Gailliot: | Right across from Hamilton’s Drug Store.
| | Shirley Gailliot: | And the gentleman that ran it, Pop they called him,
| | Pamela Cressey: | Is that where you could go for sodas?
| | Edward Gailliot: | Hamilton’s?
| | Pamela Cressey: | Go in there and have sodas? Shirely Warthen - what was her maiden name? We interviewed someone else who grew up in Del Ray. Her father was with the police department.
| | Edward Gailliot: | Simms?
| | Pamela Cressey: | No, it starts with “G”, I think.
| | Shirley Gailliot: | Not the Grimm’s?
| | Pamela Cressey: | Yes. Grimms
| | Edward Gailliot: | Norman Grimm.
| | Shirley Gailliot: | Norman Grimm worked with me.
| | Shirley Gailliot: | That’s about right. Yes. Grimm.
| | Pamela Cressey: | And then they’d go over to Pop’s and sit down and have soda fountain drinks.
| | Shirley Gailliot: | There was Del Ray Drug Store too.
| | Mary Baumann: | Plenty of drugstores.
| | Shirley Gailliot: | Hamilton’s. And Bowman’s. I lived next door to Bowman’s.
| | Edward Gailliot: | Bowman was a little stricter. He was (inaudible)
| | Shirley Gailliot: | You didn’t really go in …. They kids didn’t really go in there that much.
| | Edward Gailliot: | My friend, Bobby Barry, worked there. He used to give extra scoops.
| | Pamela Cressey: | All these places had a soda fountain?
| | Edward Gailliot: | Yes. After school is when you went by.
| | Shirley Gailliot: | Hamilton’s was the one that most of the kids hung out at.
| | Mary Baumann: | You just walk over there after school.
| | Pamela Cressey: | Did the seats turn?
| | Edward Gailliot: | At the counter, yes.
| | Pamela Cressey: | At the counter.
| | Edward Gailliot: | They had tables and also a counter.
| | Shirley Gailliot: | Del Ray Drugstore was pretty popular.
| | Shirley Gailliot: | That was Doc Cornell.
| | Edward Gailliot: | I worked at the Vernon Theater for about five years. As an usher.
| | Pamela Cressey: | Now what would be a great movie to go see there?
| | Edward Gailliot: | Movies were just like TV. You had “B movies” from Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday, and Thursday. And you had double feature Friday and Saturday. Sunday is when you had the main, the good feature. Leave her to Heaven, which was a great movie.
| | Shirley Gailliot: | Also, at one time, the Vernon Theater was the church for St. Rita’s.
| | Edward Gailliot: | Yes. St. Rita’s
| | Shirley Gailliot: | … until they got the new one built.
| | Pamela Cressey: | Really?
| | Shirley Gailliot: | Yes, they had church services on Sunday at the Vernon Theater.
| | Pamela Cressey: | And they built the new church they have now?
| | Shirley Gailliot: | Yes.
| | Mary Baumann: | That went on for a few years.
| | Shirley Gailliot: | Ed’s cousin’s wife - her family is the one that donated all that land to St. Rita’s.
| | Pamela Cressey: | Were a lot of people in Del Ray Catholic?
| | Shirley Gailliot: | I think so.
| | Edward Gailliot: | [Doubfully] I don’t know.
| | Shirley Gailliot: | There seemed to be quite a few.
| | Pamela Cressey: | I think there was a Baptist church there too.
| | Edward Gailliot: | Oh, yes, Del Ray Baptist.
| | Shirley Gailliot: | Yes, and Del Ray Methodist.
| | Edward Gailliot: | Del Ray Methodist.
| | Shirley Gailliot: | What was it? The Methodist church right around the corner from Del Ray Ave., wasn’t it? Yes, I think that’s what it was.
| | Edward Gailliot: | St. Rita’s was up there on Hickory, on Hickory St. (The old St. Rita’s.)
| | Shirley Gailliot: | The old one.
| | Edward Gailliot: | The old St. Rita’s. Those steps. They had to go up steps. My father’s casket, they had to carry it down. I remember that. 1949 is when St. Rita’s was built down on Russell Rd.
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| Shirley Gailliot: | When it snowed, and there was a lot of snow, St. Rita’s, up there on Hickory St., had a big hill, and we come down that hill and go off the cement wall, …
| | Edward Gailliot: | The wall, about three feet
| | Shirley Gailliot: | … and then go down the street all the way to Commonwealth Ave.
| | Mary Baumann: | Did anyone ever get hurt?
| | Shirley Gailliot: | No.
| | Edward Gailliot: | My friend, Alfred Vermillion, drove a wagon down Forest St. and he went out in the traffic and he got hit, hurt real bad.
| | Shirley Gailliot: | We used to have kids that watched the street to make sure there wasn’t (sic) any cars.
| | Edward Gailliot: | Mt. Ida is the one that we used to come down sleigh riding. Go down there, around the curve. “Watch that tree.” And go all the way down.
| | Shirley Gailliot: | Well, when I lived on Maple St., it was right there by the railroad tracks. When it snowed we used to go up to the top of the railroad tracks and come down the hill. Like I said, they always had guards that walked along there looking for hobos from trains. He would watch to make sure it was OK for us to do it. Although it wasn’t supposed to be. That’s where we used to go sleigh riding.
| | Edward Gailliot: | Then you drive the car up the hill back of the bumper. That’s dangerous. (inaudible) sleigh riding (inaudible) They built a bonfire on Mt. Ida, atop of the hill up there. And you’d come down. You’d always try to get three on a sled and it never worked. Never worked.
| | Pamela Cressey: | Now were these wood sleds?
| | Edward Gailliot: | Oh, no, they had runners.
| | Pamela Cressey: | They had runners but they rest would be wood?
| | Shirley Gailliot: | Yes, they were they flyers.
| | Pamela Cressey: | Flyers.
| | Shirley Gailliot: | We used to sleigh ride up at the Masonic Temple too.
| | Mary Baumann: | Did you get a lot of snow?
| | Edward Gailliot: | Yes, we thought so because ….
| | Shirley Gailliot: | But school never closed. It never closed for snow.
| | Edward Gailliot: | Sometimes it did.
| | Shirley Gailliot: | I never got out of school for snow.
| | Mary Baumann: | I went to Catholic schools too. I never got out.
| | Shirley Gailliot: | I can remember walking to school in a snowstorm one day, two of my girlfriends and me, and the policeman stopped and picked us up and gave us a ride to school.
| | Pamela Cressey: | It was so bad out.
| | Shirley Gailliot: | Yes.
| | Mary Baumann: | So you’d go sledding then after school let out.
| | Edward Gailliot: | God, that was fun. I enjoyed that. I think that was fun in my life was sleigh riding. Especially when you wrecked. Zoooom. Hit that snow.
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| Shirley Gailliot: | Most of the policemen in town were friends with my family so they mostly all knew me.
| | Edward Gailliot: | Yes, tell them about them.
| | Mary Baumann: | Was your father a policeman?
| | Shirley Gailliot: | No, it was just that my father had a good friend that was a policeman.
| | Edward Gailliot: | And they all come around and watch flights on Friday night.
| | Shirley Gailliot: | Friday night you go by my house and you see quite a few scout cars outside because they were all inside watching the fights on TV.
| | Mary Baumann: | Oh, OK.
| | Shirley Gailliot: | And when we first moved to the neighborhood on Alexandria Ave. and all the police showed up on a Friday night, all the neighbors [were] looking out the window. “What’s going on?”
| | Pamela Cressey: | What did he do for a living?
| | Shirley Gailliot: | My father?
| | Pamela Cressey: | Yes.
| | Shirley Gailliot: | He worked for the Bureau of Engraving. He was a pressman.
| | Pamela Cressey: | So how did he happen to know all these policemen?
| | Shirley Gailliot: | It just so happened that my older sister worked at First National Bank in Alexandria. And this one policeman used to come in there a lot. When my sister worked at the bank, this policeman used to come in to see her boss and one day he met my father and they became friends. That was just the way everybody was. That was just the way it happened.
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| Edward Gailliot: | Tell them who you worked for.
| | Shirley Gailliot: | First I worked for Citizens National Bank. That was on the corner of Mt. Vernon and Hume. Then we were merged with First National Bank and became First and Citizens. And then, after a while, I worked at the main office down on King St. But when I retired I worked for Burke and Herbert.
| | Edward Gailliot: | Yes, but for a while you worked for Citizens, then you had a family, raised a family, you worked for the cafeteria in Rose Hill, stayed close to home with the kids. Then she went back to work.
| | Shirley Gailliot: | When the kids were in school, I worked at the cafeteria at Rose Hill School.
| | Edward Gailliot: | This is what she got when she retired.
| | Shirley Gailliot: | Yes, and I also …
| | Pamela Cressey: | … from Burke and Herbert Bank?
| | Shirley Gailliot: | I worked at Burke and Herbert for 26 years.
| | Edward Gailliot: | (inaudible)
| | Pamela Cressey: | Unbelievable.
| | Mary Baumann: | That’s great.
| | Pamela Cressey: | Unbelievable. That’s where I go.
| | Shirley Gailliot: | I worked at the operations center on Duke St. I used to, when I first started working for Burke and Herbert, I worked at the one on the corner of King and Fairfax. And then, the operations got so big, we had to move out to Duke St. And that’s where I worked.
| | Edward Gailliot: | When Burke and Herbert went to computer, old Mr. Burke draped the whole bank in black. He didn’t like it.
| | Mary Baumann: | He didn’t like computers.
| | Shirley Gailliot: | Yes, he draped the whole bank in black.
| | Mary Baumann: | He was in mourning.
| | Shirley Gailliot: | I was in the computer department.
| | Pamela Cressey: | But you were needed.
| | Mary Baumann: | Now did he ever come around, and ….
| | Shirley Gailliot: | Yes
| | Mary Baumann: | I think most people even though at first …..
| | Edward Gailliot: | So she got this from Burke and Herbert.
| | Pamela Cressey: | Oh, a parrot.
| | Shirley Gailliot: | When I retired the girls gave me that.
| | Pamela Cressey: | Beautiful.
| | Mary Baumann: | What year did you retire?
| | Shirley Gailliot: | 1998
| | Pamela Cressey: | Oh, that was very … not very long ago?
| | Shirley Gailliot: | No, about five, six years ago.
| | Pamela Cressey: | You had a long career.
| | Shirley Gailliot: | Yes, I worked for them for quite a while.
| | Edward Gailliot: | Twelve hours a day, every day.
| | Shirley Gailliot: | OK, we won’t go into that.
| | Pamela Cressey: | Twelve hour days?
| | Shirley Gailliot: | I was in operations and I worked in the proof and research department. We stayed until everything was done.
| | Shirley Gailliot: | All the checks that you deposit, we were responsible for getting them out. We had to prove everything everyday.
| | Pamela Cressey: | Twelve hour days.
| | Shirley Gailliot: | I usually put in a twelve hour day.
| | Pamela Cressey: | They must have been very sad when you retired.
| | Shirley Gailliot: | Oh, I don’t know. There was plenty to take over.
| | Shirley Gailliot: | You just don’t know. All of us in operations worked quite a few hours.
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| Pamela Cressey: | It sounds like your home when you were growing up was a busy house?
| | Shirley Gailliot: | Oh, yes.
| | Pamela Cressey: | Now how many children were there?
| | Shirley Gailliot: | I’m one of six.
| | Pamela Cressey: | One of six.
| | Edward Gailliot: | You should see the mother. Not any higher than this. The only woman in the world that picked apples in high heels.
| | Shirley Gailliot: | My mother wore high heels to clean house in.
| | Pamela Cressey: | What was her name?
| | Shirley Gailliot: | Mary.
| | Pamela Cressey: | Mary. What was her maiden name?
| | Shirley Gailliot: | Bradhurst.
| | Pamela Cressey: | Bradhurst
| | Shirley Gailliot: | She grew up in Maryland. In Piscataway.
| | Pamela Cressey: | Did you have apple trees?
| | Shirley Gailliot: | No, we … on weekends we used to get in the car and go different places. Sometimes we’d go apple picking when it was apple picking season. And she’d climb the ladder, picking apples in high heels. Sometimes we’d go up to Skyland Drive … different places.
| | Shirley Gailliot: | On weekends we all just take trips and go somewhere.
| | Pamela Cressey: | Sounds fun.
| | Shirley Gailliot: | Yes.
| | Pamela Cressey: | Fun family.
| | Mary Baumann: | So was it sisters, or brothers. How many … You said there was ….
| | Shirley Gailliot: | I had … there was (4) four girls and two boys.
| | Mary Baumann: | Four girls and two boys.
| | Shirley Gailliot: | And the boys were the youngest.
| | Mary Baumann: | All the boys were younger.
| | Shirley Gailliot: | Yes, the girls were the oldest. And I was the third one. I’m the only dark-haired one of the six of them. All the rest are blond.
| | Mary Baumann: | Really? That’s interesting. And were your parents blond?
| | Shirley Gailliot: | Yes, I look like my grandfather.
| | Mary Baumann: | I guess you’ve got the regressive, is it regressive?
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| Edward Gailliot: | I was only famous one time in my life.
| | Shirley Gailliot: | [Continuing her side of the conversation] But it was something with everybody did; the draft was still in effect.
| | Edward Gailliot: | I went in the Navy.
| | Pamela Cressey: | Wow! They made a poster out of you.
| | Edward Gailliot: | Yes, getting sworn into the Navy. They used it all over the country. My friends saw it and had a party. A fellow in California. He says, “I know that guy.”
| | Mary Baumann: | That’s when you were actually being sworn in?
| | Edward Gailliot: | Sworn in. Yes. Cleaned it up a little bit. (Looking at the Navy poster.)
| | Shirley Gailliot: | They used to have posters like that in front of the Post Office.
| | Pamela Cressey: | That is beautiful. Aren’t you proud of that? I bet your kids just love that.
| | Edward Gailliot: | [inaudible talking in the background]
| | Pamela Cressey: | Now, when you first met him, he looked kind of like this?
| | Shirley Gailliot: | Yes, he was already out of the service.
| | Pamela Cressey: | He was pretty cute when you saw him?
| | Shirley Gailliot: | (inaudible)
| | Pamela Cressey: | How’d you meet him?
| | Shirley Gailliot: | We just went to the same church when [we] lived back in Del Ray - St. Rita’s Catholic.
| | Edward Gailliot: | I sang in the choir and I asked one of the boys - Shirley’s brother - for her telephone number.
| | Shirley Gailliot: | My brother sang in the choir with him.
| | Edward Gailliot: | … with the dark eyes. Here’s my mother accepting the poster. That’s in Del Ray. That’s the Sears and Roebuck house.
| | Pamela Cressey: | Oh, this is the living room.
| | Mary Baumann: | [whispers to Pamela Cressey]
| | Pamela Cressey: | Oh, I do have to go. Thank you for taping for me.
| | Mary Baumann: | Actually, I think our tape has just about run out, so we ….
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