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Interview with Bill Freeman

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  • William Freeman 1 Interviewer: Nathan Wade Interviewee: William Freeman Interview Date: April 20, 2017 Location: Jackson County, NC Length: 1:18:43 Also present: Dr. Libby McRae; Dr. Alex Macaulay; son, Tim Freeman; Mrs. Nicholson Pre interview conversation: William Freeman: Well, you said in ’42, and I joined the Navy in ’43. Well, in fact, I was over in the Pacific in 1943. Yeah, I got over there early. Our boot camp was needing people. We just got a fifteen day leave to come home, and then they sent us straight to Hawaii. Nathan Wade: Wow. WF: We were supposed to go to a “I don’t know nothing about this place,” but they told us there we were going to go to New Caledonia. That’s over next to Australia. They couldn’t get a ship to take us. We had sat on the drill field all day and waited and then the next day they got another ship that came in, and we went to Pearl Harbor. Mrs. Nicholson: Wow. Isn’t that something? I mean, that is something. WF: My whole company went. There wasn’t anybody that got to go… Well, a lot them were offered certain things, and they probably didn’t want them. To go to school. But, they tried to get me to go in the submarine service, and it’s all voluntary, or it was supposed to be, and I told them I didn’t want anything to do with the submarines. I wanted to fly. Alex Macaulay: Above the water not below it. WF: There you go. I wanted to see where I was going. Well, I didn’t want to go into the Navy. I wanted to get into the Air Force. AM: Yeah. WF: And the recruiter… We had just finished the tenth grade and the recruiter got after us. You know, that’s the way they do. They find out which ones are seventeen years old. And, I didn’t have any intentions of going, and my buddy, he lived right down here on that other road, after he got out of the service he made highway trooper. But, he played football. I drove a school bus. I couldn’t play football, and he… Well, I lost my train of thought there for a minute. Oh! He wanted to join the Marines. He was a real tough football player. NW: Uh huh. WF: Then the recruiter got ahold of us, and he said, “If I can get you boys your high school diploma would you join the Navy?” We said we’d consider it. NW: What did the patch stand for? William Freeman 2 WF: I was an aviation machinist mate. And, second class in the Navy was equal to a staff sergeant in the Army or Air Force. MN: Do y’all want to go ahead and start? He should be here, but y’all go ahead and start. Libby McRae: Ok. MN: He’ll be right here… He should be here in just a minute or five minutes. WF: He’ll be alright. START of INTERVIEW NW: Thank you so much for agreeing to this interview. It’s a huge honor. So, if you would just state your name for the record, I guess. LMR: You might have to talk louder. WF: What? NW: Sorry. Will you just state your name for the recording? MN: Say your name, Daddy, for the recording. They’re going to record you. NW: Sorry. WF: My name… I go by Bill Freeman, but it’s William Thomas Freeman. That’s my full name. NW: Uh huh. NW: So, where were you born and what year were you born? WF: I was born on July the twenty-sixth in 19 and 25, and I was born in Waynesville. NW: Waynesville? WF: Right. Then, my dad bought this place up here. NW: Yeah. What were your parents’ names and what did they do for a living? WF: My dad was Tom Freeman, and my mother was Martha, and she was just a housewife. My dad was in the trucking business back during the depression. There wasn’t hardly anyone around here who had a truck for hire, you know. He hauled. He moved a lot of people. People would have to move and didn’t have any way to go, I guess. He hauled cattle to the market. Tobacco to the tobacco places. Anything that needed hauling. I mean, he did quite a few, back in those days, trips to Greenville, South Carolina. NW: Wow. WF: And Spartanburg and in that area. That was considered a long trip back then. In those days, I went with him several times to Asheville. I mean, a lot of places. But, he’d go to Asheville maybe once a week or every two weeks or get a trip, you know. And the roads just wound all the way around. You couldn’t go into Asheville like you do now. You had to go to Inca. That means William Freeman 3 going from here you turn right and go over and come in through West Asheville. And, if you had anything to do in town, or anything, it took nearly a full day to go to Asheville and back from here. NW: Wow. So, what were some of your fondest family memories? You mentioned riding around with your dad… WF: Yeah. Well, when I went to school there wasn’t anything… We lived right here… Well, you take Heights Creek, there wasn’t over two or three houses that had power. We didn’t get any power here. I was in the Navy, but my mother got it in the last of 1945. And, all the neighbors around here didn’t have any power. There was no TV and very few people had radios. We had a radio, but the battery would go dead. Quite often, we wouldn’t have anything. Back when I can remember as a boy, the mail delivery up here, when I was just a few years old, was by horse and buggy. Mister Brownlet. He had a buggy and a real nice horse. He delivered all the way up through here. He delivered the mail. NW: Times have changed a lot. Can you describe your family life growing up? Did you do a lot of chores around the house? WF: We farmed. We had this land here. We raised corn, and we’d have a big garden. There were six of us children, and you couldn’t go to the grocery store even if you had the money like they do now. They had a few things, but not very much. They didn’t have any supermarkets or anything, and we canned nearly everything that we had. You had to use about a half a gallon jars, most of the time unless it was jelly or something. Then it would be less. But you’d take six kids, and I’m the oldest kid… NW: Uh huh. WF: And so that’s about the way it was. There wasn’t anybody who had much money. I mean, and you thought you were real poor, but everybody’s in the same boat. NW: Yeah. WF: That’s right. NW: Was the neighborhood close together? Did you hang out a lot with other kids around the neighborhood? WF: Well, they visited more back then than they do now. But, we’d go to church. They didn’t have a church. Well, they’ve got one over there now. But, they didn’t have a church. We went to Allen’s Creek to the church. Most of the time you walked. I mean, my dad had the truck like I said, but he was busy. If you wanted to go somewhere you walked. I walked to Waynesville, I guess, a hundred times. You go down here to the railroad track and walk all the way to Waynesville. Down to the depot. That was the nearest way you could go. NW: Can you tell me about your schooling? Did you go to high school? Where did you go to high school and elementary school? William Freeman 4 WF: I started the first grade in Hazelwood, and it got a little crowded. After that, we had to go to the sixth grade at Central Elementary. I just finished ten grades. We just had eleven grades in high school. Like I told you, I drove a school bus the last year, in the tenth grade. NW: Wow. WF: And, they won’t let school kids drive school buses anymore. Then I went… Well, the Navy recruiter, like I told you a minute ago, got after us to join. We told him the we’d consider it, and he said, “Let’s go see Mr. Bold.” He was the principal. I had promised him that I’d drive the school bus next year. He asked me at the end of the year. He said, “Will you drive the bus next year?” I was planning on that. So then, the recruiter got ahold of us, and he said, “Let’s go see Mr. Bold.” We went over there, and he said, “Now, if you boys want to join the Navy I’ll give you your diploma if you don’t get in any trouble.” Most of the guys… When I came back, I started in at state college. But, most of the guys had not got their diploma. They were guys that were as far along as we were, but they didn’t get their diplomas because they hadn’t made that trade with him, I guess. They had to go back to high school for a pretty good while to get their diploma. LMR: After being in the war they went back to high school? WF: Uh huh. NW: Wow. WF: Sure did. I remember several of the guys. They went back to get their diploma. They didn’t have their diploma. They drafted some people out of high school. I didn’t even know that. But, I can tell you a little story about my first cousin. I told you my daddy trucked for a living. Then he passed away, and he had a nearly new truck left here. My cousin was about five years older than me. He had two small children, and he said, “Well, I won’t have to go. I checked, and I’m not going to have to go. How much will you take for the truck?” I said, “Well, it belongs to my mother,” and I said, “When I come back from boot camp, if she wants to sell it and you still want to buy it we’ll talk.” When I got back, I was gone for eight weeks, and when I got back he had been drafted for four weeks with two small children. NW: Wow. WF: And, he got… He hit D-Day. The big one there. He marched all the way from when they landed there, and it took, I don’t know how many months, through there. But, he marched all the way to Berlin. He was in Berlin when the war ended. NW: Wow. AM: Wow. WF: He said he wasn’t going to have to go, but now that’s the way they were getting them then. They drafted him while I was gone. NW: So, you were a volunteer though? William Freeman 5 WF: Yeah. I volunteered. NW: Yeah. WF: Like I told you, the recruiter got ahold of us. There were four of us from Waynesville. They’re all dead now. I’m the only one that’s still living. We had to go to Raleigh. Back then, you went to Raleigh if you were a volunteer. You joined the Navy. We joined up down there, and I mean they put us on the train, and we headed straight for the Great Lakes. They said that was where we’d take our training. We had to stay there for eight weeks and then got to come home for a fifteen-day leave. Then we went straight back to Great Lakes. They loaded us on troop trains, and we went all the way to the West Coast. We waited around out there for about three or four days to see where we were going to go and if they could get a ship to take us. The one that took us over to Pearl Harbor was the U.S.S. Louisville, a heavy cruiser. They had taken a hit at Guadalcanal. Not a bad one, but they had to go to dry dock. They let half the crew off, and then they sent him back and he made a record run. We had to zig-zag all the way to Pearl Harbor. That was in 1943. NW: Wow. WF: Then, I don’t know what you want or what your next questions are. But, anyway, we went to Pearl Harbor and everybody got separated. I mean, you couldn’t stir with a stick there were so many people there. All the others, the four that were from here that went, they got aboard a ship, and they sent me to be at Midway Island. I don’t know why they did, but I guess they looked at my record and said, “Well, he was in the trucking business and drove a school bus, maybe we’ll give him land duty.” I don’t know if that was what it was, but when I got there I asked for aviation. They had two islands on Midway. Sand was the big one. Eastern Island was the small one. It was a mile long and a half-mile at the widest point, but now you talk about crowded. It was covered up with Seabees (CBs), Marines… There were just a few of us Navy there. We ran the base, the control tower, and all of that. But, the Marines had the tanks there. The island was small, but they had a bunch of tanks. In fact, my battle station was with the Marines. I stayed on Midway for thirteen months. NW: So, was this before… Were you in the Battle of Midway? WF: No. I got there after that. NW: After. WF: I had just barely turned eighteen when I got there. My birthday is in July, and I got there in September. There wasn’t anything… It was a blackout area all the time. We couldn’t have any lights on during the night. We had blinds on the McWanson hut. I stayed in the McWanson hut. Fun fact, when I first got there they put me on mess cooking. I was kind of dreading it, you know. I hadn’t even sat my seagoing stuff down and they said, “Two of you have to go on mess cooking.” One guy there, I don’t know what his job was, and I didn’t ever see him much after that, he said, “I’ll take your place for five dollars.” I said, “No, I want to get it over with.” I hit it lucky. The Seabees did all the work. That’s the construction battalion in the Navy. The tenth construction battalion was formed… They were from North Carolina right around Winston William Freeman 6 Salem/Statesville, and when they get a Seabee outfit they get cooks, bakers, automobile mechanics, they do all the work and everything, you know. They get their bunch and call for certain jobs that they could do. They told me to go on over to the mess. I got over there and the first thing they say when a new one comes in is, “Where you from, mate?” I said, “I’m from North Carolina.” Well, they were all from North Carolina. He said, “Well, your job is going to be taking care of the bakery products”, and you go to the bakery and bring them in and serve them on the line and everything. We scrub the mess hall down every Thursday. We’ll scrub it completely down, so that’s your day off. “We give you that day off.” I liked it. It was pretty good. I mean, it wasn’t a bad job or anything. The captain sent the messenger over… I’d been there six weeks. You were supposed to do three months of mess cooking, and he came over there and he said, “The captain wants to see you.” A captain in the Navy is about equal to above a colonel in the army. He was over the whole island. I guess he looked at my record. I can’t figure out any other thing. He said, “Freeman, I’m going to take you off mess cooking and put you on the field lighting detail.” We had a big ten-wheeled truck with big flood lights, and you could just turn them on when they were landing or taking off. The pilots didn’t like it. They quarreled all the time. You had your runway lights… When you were up in the air you could see everything, but they couldn’t turn them on except for just a few minutes because we were in the blackout area. LMR: Why was it a blackout? Because of the Japanese? Why was it a blackout area? WF: Well, we were in the combat zone. See, Midway was in the combat zone, and the Japs they came there to take it. I don’t know if you’ve read the history on the thing, but we sunk four of their aircraft carriers. We just about took their fleet. They were done as far as their fleet after the battle at Midway. That was a turning point in the war. But they still aggravated us, you know. They were coming around. Submarines would surface, and I would have to go to the battle stations many of a night. They would get us out and going, you know. Then I flew not too many missions. I thought it’s too boring. We flew submarine patrols all over there to see if there was anything there, but besides submarines and ships and all that… We flew six through a triangle. I mean, we flew six hundred miles straight out one wind and cut across six hundred and back again six hundred. We left at six in the morning and got back at five. We flew for eleven hours, and you couldn’t see anything but water. I mean, we were down close to the water. You talk about boring. That was boring. So, I didn’t do any more than I had to. NW: When you got home from… Well, did you serve in any battles during your time in the Pacific? WF: Did I serve where? NW: In any battles? WF: No. We didn’t have any big battles. Midway was sort of off. We were two thousand miles off from Hawaii, and we were stuck out there. It was hard to get to. They could get their submarines and things there, but they couldn’t fly to it. That’s the reason they brought their whole fleet to take Midway. They claim, I’ve read this story then heard the people that were still there talk about it… They were so sure they were going to take Midway that they had their William Freeman 7 planes in boxes. I mean, cartons on the decks of a lot of the ships so they could put them together. They got fooled. Then after… I guess you were going to ask a question, I’m not sure, but I came from Midway to Ford Island in Hawaii. I stayed there about… Well, I stayed thirteen months on Midway, and I stayed over there for two years so I stayed eight or nine months in Pearl Harbor. NW: So, from Midway did you just go home, or did you go to another place? WF: No. I didn’t get to come back for two years. I stayed over there for two years. I came back from Midway… Well, it’s kind of a long story. My orders, you carried your orders with you. We did. They had them all ready and everything, and they said I was supposed to go over to Kaneohe Bay. That’s on the other side of Pearl Harbor. I had to go in there and spend one night off the ship. So, I got up the next morning. That’s the way they do in the service. Then they called roll, we had to sign in that night, and they said, “All you guys get on this truck and go out there and you’re going to dig graves today.” And I thought, “Well, that’s a foolish thing. I’ll be here for a month or two if I keep doing that.” I told them, “No, I’ve got my own orders with me here, and I’m going to Kaneohe Bay, but I don’t know how to get there.” That officer, he was a hateful son of a gun, he turned his nose up when I told him I didn’t know how I was going to get to Kaneohe Bay. He mumbled around a little bit and dialed two or three telephones, and he called back and said, “They’re going to take you to Ford Island.” So, I just had to go about two or three miles from where I was. I didn’t go over to Kaneohe Bay, and I never did get to see that Naval air station. I was always stationed at Naval air stations. I was never assigned to a ship. I was a passenger. When I came back from Pearl Harbor, they were still fighting pretty heavy on Iwo Jima. I came back to San Diego on a hospital ship that had five hundred wounded Marines on that ship. They had two or three of them that had lost three limbs, either two legs and an arm or two arms and a leg. I didn’t know which ones they were, but it was sort of a sad trip there. NW: Yeah. WF: They were still fighting… I came back… I can’t remember what days, but I think it was around the first of April 1945. But I’d gotten my orders and everything to come home for a thirty-day leave. I got to Los Angeles from San Diego and was waiting in a café or a bar-like thing where you could eat and this that and the other, and it came over the news that President Roosevelt had died. That was the twelfth of the month. NW: So, when you got home, who was the first person that you saw? The first person that you got together with? WF: Well, I guess my mother. She lived down there in that other house. I guess that was the first… I don’t know if I remember any of them. I had to catch a bus from Asheville. They put us on a bus. I got discharged up there in Virginia pretty close to Norfolk. I was stationed at Glenville, Illinois. Well, when I first got back to going to duty, I was stationed at New Orleans, Louisiana over on Lake Pontchartrain. That was really a pretty base there. I stayed there until the war ended. They made us a separation center out of it. I then got transferred to Glenville, Illinois Naval Air Station. Up there I was in PFIS, Primary Flight Instructor School. William Freeman 8 LMR: How long were you there? WF: Up in…? LMR: In Illinois? WF: See, I was trying to think. I got discharged on December the fifth, 1945. I think I got up there about September. Didn’t stay there long. They were starting to discharge people, but that was within ten miles of where I took my basic training. Less than ten miles from Great Lakes. NW: Wow. WF: That was a nice station. We did a lot of flying up there in those Steersman-type training planes. That was what I was in, primary flight instructor school. NW: Kind of backtracking a little bit, but what was your training like at the Great Lakes? Was it intense? WF: Well not… We just had eight weeks of training, you know. I guess they tried to have more than that earlier, but they were needing troops and everything. We went through… One day you may go over your tying knots and all that stuff. Marching, drilling. We got up at about four o’clock in the morning, and went out and did drills and did calisthenics. Then, we came in and had breakfast. You’d stay busy about all day, and you had to be in the bed by nine o’clock. They had lights out at nine o’clock. Of course, you were ready to go. That was about the way it was. They trained us in a lot of different things. Seamanship and all that. But I never really was in the regular Navy like they have, you know. Now, we were allowed to do this and not any other part of the service. If you were in aviation, you could skip seaman first class, and they claim that was one of the toughest ranks to make in the Navy. They had so much seamanship that they had to learn, but you didn’t have to learn it if you were in aviation. You could skip that rank and go to the next one. I mean, that was just like getting promoted. I know when I was on Midway there I got third class petty officer. I was going up for it, and this lieutenant there, he wasn’t even one of my officers or anything… I just reported to the captain. That was the only man I ever dealt with. Anyway, I was going to go up for third class, and they were getting me the things you had to fill out, so I could take the test and everything, and I said, “Well, I’m glad that I’m getting to skip that seaman first class.” He said, “No, you need to take it.” I said, “Well, I couldn’t pass it,” and he laid out the test and the answers and everything. He said, “I believe you can.” He said, “The reason you need to get it.” I could have skipped it, you know. But he said, “If you ever get busted down,” they call it busted down, “You’ll go back to seaman second. You won’t go back to that rank.” See, I had it passed. So, if I ever… If something happened that I had to go back down some, I could go to seaman first. But, I didn’t know anything about it. NW: When you came home, did you keep in touch with some of your buddies from the military? WF: No, not hardly any of them. I don’t think. We were transferred around so much you didn’t make a lot of close friends. I had a lot of good friends though off Midway. I had their addresses and everything. I’ll tell you another tale. I guess you all have heard of this guy that’s in Hendersonville. That flies the Veteran’s Divorced in D.C.? William Freeman 9 MN: Jeff Miller. WF: Jeff Miller. I don’t know if y’all know him or not. Well anyway, I was getting ready to go up there to Washington, and he was going to make a speech over there. We had to go to Asheville and everything. Happened to be that his son was the one that relieved me on Midway. He was from Hendersonville. Now, I did keep in touch with him. Tim Freeman: It was his father. WF: Yeah. It was his father. TF: His son was doing the honor-air. Jeff was doing the honor-air. WF: Yes. That was his father that relieved me on Midway. LMR: Wow. NW: Wow. WF: Well, we were over there getting ready to go to Washington, D.C. and everything, and they said his name was Jeff Miller, and I said, “He’s from Hendersonville I wonder if he’s any kin to him.” So, I asked him, I said to somebody there, “Where is Jeff Miller?” And they said, “He’s up there in the front.” I thought he’d left. I said, “Just tell him I want to speak to him.” And he got stopped halfway out, and he was waiting on me. I rode over there with some other people that were kindly waiting on me. I was afraid they were going to leave me. I walked up to him, and he had gotten stopped talking to somebody like I said, and I said, “Mr. Miller.” I told him that his son… NM: Dad. TF: His father. WF: His father. I said, “Your father relieved me on Midway.” I thought he was going to faint. He reared back, and he said, “What did you say?” I told him I again. I said, “Your father relieved me on Midway.” LMR: Wow. AC: It’s a small world. WF: He couldn’t believe it. Lord, I like to have never gotten back up. Every time I’d go over there, he stayed right around with me most of the time. They had a fellow that was your escort I guess you’d call it. He’d take care of you. I was able to get around pretty good then. I don’t even think I had to use a cane, did I, Tim? TF: I don’t think so. WF: No. So, he didn’t have to watch after me much. He had to watch after some of the others. But, he sat with me on the plane coming back, part of the time. He was over the whole shebang. William Freeman 10 NW: Wow. After your service in the Navy, what did you begin to do? Did you attend college or…? WF: I went to state college for three years. I would have been… If I had gone back, I would have been a senior. And, this is quite a story too. I got to come home for the summer, and I didn’t have anything to do. I was going to try to find me something to do, and my first cousin, the one I told you had been to Berlin, he was in the taxi business and was before he went in. He had two taxis. We walked up the street, about the first week I was home, and Dan Wadkins had the Chevrolet place on main street, and he had a brand-new Chevrolet Cabo engine truck. It was a real pretty yellow. Black fenders and brand-new. He ordered for a wholesale grocer, and you couldn’t get a vehicle or car, I stayed on the list for a new Chevrolet for two years before I got it, a full eight-line ’48 model. You couldn’t get trucks or anything, but they turned that truck down. Me and Hal just walked up there, looking around. We looked at the truck, you know. My dad was in the trucking business, so I used his truck after he passed away for a while to keep the family a-going. We looked at that truck a little bit. I can remember it today… twenty-two hundred and twenty-two dollars is what it sold for. It had the sticker on the windshield, on the door. Hal said to me, he said, “Why don’t you and me just buy this truck?” I said, “Well, I’ve got to go back to college. I’ve got one more year and everything.” He said, “Well, we can go in together on it.” He said, “I’ll run it while you’re gone.” I thought, “Well…” and we fooled around, and we bought it! And, split it up. I don’t think he had hardly enough money to buy it. I didn’t have just a little. I let it… I had enough that we paid cash for it. NW: Wow. WF: We got a fellow to build us a bed on it. He got that fixed up. We bought the tires and the insurance and everything. Then the hauling started pretty good. That was 1948. My class was ’49. I started hauling around, and I can’t remember, but I think maybe I bought him out. We decided there wasn’t enough money for two people, and we bought an apple orchard over there, McCracken’s Orchard in Francis Cove. We were hauling, buying, and picking apples. We’d haul them to the Columbia market or the Atlanta market and sell them and this that and the other. Well, it came about time to go back to school and business was going well. I hadn’t been making a lot of money, so I was making a little money… there’s the reason I never did finish college. I went on after that and got into the long-distance trucking business with B&P motor lines. I wound up with five trucks running in thirty-six states. NW: Wow. WF: I made some good money out of the trucking business. A lot of people, you know, couldn’t survive, but business was good. We hauled new furniture from Hazelwood. There were two big factories, and we were running two trips a week. That was after I got out of the straight-truck business. That was later on. I stayed in that about ten or eleven years, wasn’t it, Tim? TF: Yeah. I think that… WF: I think I stayed in to build a living here. NW: That’s awesome. So, when you were in college, what did you study for those three years? William Freeman 11 WF: Engineering, mechanical. NW: So, with your trucking business… Did you… I’m sorry. My mind just went blank. Where else did you work after the trucking business? MN: Chickens? WF: Uh huh. MN: Chickens and construction contractor. WF: I had a big chicken operation up here. The chicken house… We tore it down and everything. It was three-hundred and twenty-five feet long and two stories. I raised thirty thousand broilers at a time. We had a time running about. We had about four runs a year, and I was still in the trucking business. I solely had that as a sideline to teach my kids how to work. MN: Amen. I don’t mean to interrupt, but amen. WF: Well, I tried. You’ve got to teach them. MN: That’s why we work so hard now. WF: Well, they’d have to get up in the morning when you had those thirty thousand chickens. MN: Oh gosh… WF: You started off with half-gallon fruit jars of water and you had to move it over to the running water to get them used to it. NW: Wow. WF: These kids, I’d get them up before they went to school in the morning, and we’d fill up all those jars. MN: Yeah, we’re talking a lot. WF: At night, we’d have to scare them up into the heat if it was cold weather. Both floors. I mean, that’s a big job. I did that, and I was in the building business. I developed Howard Park over here. I don’t know if y’all know where it is. It’s a pretty good size development. I had sixty-five acres in town. NW: Wow. WF: City limits. Sixty-five acres and one hundred and eight lots. Tim lives over there now. MN: He don’t want to live over there. WF: He got the last lot I had. TF: Yeah. WF: I think it was the last, wasn’t it? William Freeman 12 TF: The last lot, I think. WF: Tim built his new house over there. I stayed in that business for, I don’t know how long it took, about fifteen years till Tim started in ’65. TF: Howard Park? It was at least fifteen. WF: Yeah. About fifteen years. I didn’t build all the houses in it. I just sold lots to the other builders. I built, I don’t know, I built twelve or fifteen, didn’t I, Tim? TF: Yeah. WF: Yeah. But I did other building on the outside. If I fellow wanted me to build him a house, it didn’t have to be an all-in-all. I stayed in the building business for, I believe, thirty-five years. NW: Wow. MN: You worked at Champion too. WF: Yeah. That’s the only job that I’ve ever had in my life. I was self-employed all my life, except for two and a half years I worked at Champion. I decided… I mean, I liked Champion. It was good, but it just didn’t make much money there. And, we had to work shifts. NW: Yeah. WF: So, I decided to get full time into the building business or go broke. NW: Champions was just a building place, right? LMR: It was a paper plant. NW: Oh! Champion’s a paper plant. WF: Yeah, paper plant. TF: It’s called Evergreen now. It’s here in Waynesville. NW: Got it. TF: It used to be called Champion. WF: I didn’t intend to go to work there. Me and my friend were… He was up at Haywood Tech College. He had a master’s degree. We got together in the third grade all the time there. So, he came up here one day during the summer. He was teaching school at Bath. He said, “Have you seen that new plant that Champion bought out?” It started out as Proctor, Proctor and Gamble. They bought it and then Champion bought it from them. I said, “No, I haven’t seen it or anything.” He said, “Well, let’s just go down and look it over.” So, we went down there. It was just getting started, and they were taking applications in there. You had to go through the state thing too, you know. But, they were taking applications for people there. Wally said, “Let’s fill us out an application.” We filled out an application. I told everybody. I said, “Well, they won’t ever call me on it. They’re not interested. They just signed a thing.” About in January, they William Freeman 13 finally got it going in December, they had a few working day shifts. They called me and told me to come in. So, I thought, “Well, I’ll give it a try.” It’s winter time, can’t do much building then, but I was still building some. I went down there and worked two and a half years. NW: Wow. So, around this time, when did you meet your beloved? Your wife? That was a weird way to put it… WF: Well, she was still in high school, and I guess we went together for about two years. I met her, I believe, at the square dance down there. We were going to the square dance. So, she was living in Maggie Valley. We just went together about two years then we decided to hook up. AC: What year was that? TF: What year did you meet Mom? WF: What year? About 1948, I think. Around that time, I was trucking, and I guess I went to the square dance. When I met her, I was selling watermelons by the truckload back up on Main Street. I was selling them, and she was with somebody and came through there, and I met her and then I guess ran into her at the square dance again. I think that’s the way it happened. NW: Can you tell me a little more about what she was like? WF: Oh yeah. She was a good mother. She was pretty high-tempered. If anybody jumped her, why she was ready to… She was in high school, and she was on the bus, and one of the guys jumped on her and got smart with her. And they said she about killed him. He had to stay out of school for weeks. And his mother said he let a woman whip him more. She said, “I’m going to beat you to death.” Like I said, she was a good mother. She took care of her kids, and you better not say anything against one of them. So, we got along good. She worked at Dayco and helped me. It took about everybody back then to keep a-going if you had a pretty big family. We had four children. Tim’s my youngest one. He’s my baby. MN: I’m your youngest. I tell everybody before I go. WF: You’re the youngest girl! TF: That’s the right idea. You’re the youngest girl. WF: You’re the youngest girl. MN: That’s a good one, Daddy. WF: We had… The second one we had we lived in Hazel. I lived down there for seven years. I didn’t live here, I lived on Kentucky Avenue. Our second baby lived twenty-one days. I was just helping out driving the gas tanker for Phillips 66, and I got up at two o’clock that morning to go to Spartanburg and get a load of oil or gas. I don’t know which it was. When I got back, the policeman met me down at Roy… What was his name? TF: I don’t know. William Freeman 14 WF: Anyway, he was a good friend of mine. He turned around down there. He spoke most of the time being in Hazel, but he was waiting on me to come through. They wouldn’t call me. And told me that they just found… His mother found the baby about five o’clock in the morning. I’d left at two. And she got up to check it, I guess, and it was something bothering it then, you know. They wouldn’t call me though. They were afraid I’d wreck. So, the policeman met me down at Frog Level and led me all the way in. I knew something was wrong then. NW: Man. So, how long have you been living here? Did you and your family live her for a little while? WF: No. I built this house in 1957. NW: Wow. WF: It’s sixty years old. This is the first house I ever built, and that’s the reason I got into the building business. I hauled most of the stuff to go into this house. I had my own carpenters, you know. I hired them. I hired the bricklayers and everything. I kind of liked it. Then, one day when I was working at Champion, I built one house, I think, and sold it over there in Nineveh. I bought a lot over there, and I thought, “Well, I believe I’ll just get out of this plant work and get into the building business.” And I got in then. Then, I got into the Auburn Park development. Elmer Hendricks built Hendricks Park over here, and he had this land tied up. That’s sixty-five acres. I went to Wilford Ray. They told me… He said, “Well, Elmer’s got the land tied up.” I said, “Well, is he going to buy it?” He said, “Well, he bought the land from me for Hendricks Park, and I’m sure he will.” So, I went to Elmer, and I said, “Are you going to sell any of the lots over there if you buy that property?” He said… Well, he thought he was going to build it all in and everything. I said, “Well, do you need a partner?” He said, “Yeah, I’m looking for a partner, but I didn’t think about you.” I said, “Well, I might be interested in going in with you.” He said, “Well, you meet me over there at two o’clock this afternoon.” He had Kenneth Muse with him. He was building a few houses, and I knew who he was, but that was all I knew. So, all three of us got together, and we bought the property. We were all equal partners. Everybody was the same. Elmer got in the cattle business and had high price cattle stuff, and I think he got into a little financial difficulty, and he built two houses. He said, “Well boys, I’m going to get out of the business. I’m going to quit building.” I told him, “Don’t you quit. We want to keep this thing a-going.” He said… I went to talk to Kenneth. We had done bought it, and Kenneth said, “Let’s see if you can keep him going.” I said, “Well, I went to talk to Kenneth…” And he said, “Well, Kenneth doesn’t know what the story is.” He said, “I’ve got to get out of it.” He didn’t tell the rest. So, I told Kenneth, I said, “Well, we better buy him out or we’re going to have another partner.” I said, “He’ll sell to somebody else.” So, we went and got with Elmer and bought him out, and me and Kenneth developed it all the way through. NW: Wow. Kind of jumping to something else, but, sorry I do kind of jump around. But, I understand that you were part of the Masonic Lodge? What kind of role has that played in your life? WF: The what? William Freeman 15 NW: The Masonic Lodge? WF: Yeah. I belonged to that for a long time, and Tim belongs to it there now. I went in in 19 and 52. I got my sixty-year pin several years ago, didn’t I, Tim? TF: Yeah. WF: Sixty years. So, I’ve been in it… Well, ’52 is when I when in, so. TF: Well, you’re still in it. You’re always in it. WF: Still in it, yeah. Forty-eight years plus seventeen. NW: Wow. LMR: Sixty-five. Isn’t that right? WF: Yeah. Yeah. And, I went up through the chairs. I was going to be the Master, but I lacked a couple rounds going up. I got so busy I couldn’t go on, you know. They want you to attend the lodge on Monday night at that time and then go to all the degrees and everything. I couldn’t do it. I just got too busy. NW: I know it’s kind of a secret society, I guess? Yeah, I don’t know. But, what is the Masonic Lodge? Is it like…? WF: Well… TF: It’s the oldest and largest fraternal organization in the world. WF: Yeah. There’s a lot in your foreign countries. TF: It’s throughout the world. So, it’s oldest and largest fraternal order. WF: I think it was on the TV the other day, Tim. They were telling all about it. All the old lodges and everything, you know. Did you see it? TF: I didn’t see it. WF: They had a lot of young-uns. It’s really a good organization. I mean, they… They claim... there’s quite a bit of secrets in it. They claim… Tim, on that program the other day they said that there were secrets, and I was like, “Man, you don’t even know!” TF: I would say that’s probably true. WF: Yeah. Yeah. TF: But I think it’s… Yeah, I don’t know. Everything’s committed to memory. WF: Yeah, you have to… TF: So, you have to… If you do something, it’s by memory. Nothing’s ever written down. William Freeman 16 WF: I’m not good anymore on stuff, but when I went in, why I went through it just like that. They made a coach out of me. I just grasped it. There was a lot to it too, wasn’t it Tim? There’s a lot to it. It’s take a lot of studying, you know. Concentrating. But, I didn’t have any trouble with it. NW: So, where do you guys meet for that? Is it? Do you still? WF: We’ve got a Masonic Lodge. They built a big one when I first went into it. It’s on that corner down there in Waynesville if you turn down Depot Street it’s on the left. That was the bank, and they’ve torn it down since then. But, up on the third floor… It was the third floor, wasn’t it, Tim? TF: That’s what they told us. WF: Yeah, you didn’t go yet. We met up there all the time. Out on Main Street. TF: But, there’s another building now that was built in… WF: 1927. TF: Current building was built in ’27. WF: You mean Harris? TF: Harris was built in… WF: No, no it was built in… What year was that building built? ’60? TF: I think it was ’60. WF: Yeah. Built in ’60. But, they got a big building there in Waynesville. It was always known as the Masonic Lodge. It’s about… It’s right down below the city hall there. And, the Masons had it, but they lost it during the Great Depression. That’s the reason that they were renting down there over the bank. But, that’s a big, nice building that Masonic Temple. TF: It’s for sale, I think. WF: Is it? NW: Thank you for your time, Sir. Is there anything else you’d like to add? WF: No. I guess that’s about all I have. I told you a bunch of stuff. AM: I’ve got one question. When you signed up to go join the Navy, did you tell your Mama about it first or did you just go ahead and sign up? WF: My mother had to sign. All four of us that went in, was seventeen years old. We all went to Raleigh, and we all had to get our parents’ signatures. I think two of us got wounded. I mean, I didn’t get wounded, but two of the four got wounded. Bill Weimer, he was on one of the… I think he was on a battleship. The Oklahoma. Yeah, I guess he was on a battleship. They had those kamikaze pilots, you know, and they… He got shot up pretty bad. I think the other guy got William Freeman 17 wounded. Ralph. I didn’t know him much. He was from off Fine’s Creek. He died… I think he died before he got out of the Navy. I think he signed over to stay in, they said. But, out of the four of us I’m the only one that’s living. LMR: I have a question. When you got to Pearl Harbor the first time, before you went to Midway, could you see… I don’t know much military history. But, were the ships… Could you tell that… Were there still like sunken ships? Could you still see the destruction from the bombing of Pearl Harbor or were…? WF: Yes. Some to it. I don’t know if you’ve watched the movies or anything, but did you see one of the movies where all the buildings were burning and there was a lot of really black smoke? That was Ford Island. That was a Naval Air Station. They worked it over pretty good. But, there was a quite a bit of things still where you were able to see them, you know. Even on Midway, they bombed quite a bit of Midway, and everybody… You could say they were still nervous, watching and going to alert a lot. TF: You could see the oil come out of the Arizona… You said you could see the oil on top of the water. WF: Yeah, yeah. TF: Early on there was a lot of oil. WF: That was in Pearl Harbor there. TF: Pearl Harbor. But your barracks were right outside of that one. WF: My barracks was right on the main island. It was a pretty old stop. It’d been there a pretty good while before the war. I slept… that’s the way it was… up on the upper end of the island where you could look out over and see the Arizona. They didn’t have the memorial fixed then. TF: Oh yeah. WF: You could see the oil leaking up from the Arizona. If it was a real pretty bright day you could kind of see the shadow that was down in there of the ship. See, what else we were talking about… Yeah, up there at that upper end… How did I end up there? They put me over the second shift in transportation. And, we had the big, nice barracks and everything there. I didn’t get off until twelve or one o’clock in the morning. Well, I’d come into the barracks and go to bed, and everybody was getting up about five o’clock. And, I couldn’t sleep. I’d get two or three or four hours of sleep in the night. I told somebody there, I said, “Well, I’m just not getting enough sleep. I have to get up here so early.” He said, “Why don’t you go down to the lower end of the island.” He said, “That’s cooks and baker’s barracks.” See, they work in the night and sleep during the day. A lot of them do. He said, “Why don’t you just go down there and get you a bunk.” And I said, “How do I get a bunk down there? I’m not a cook and a baker.” And the guy said, “Well, just go in there and if there’s an empty bunk and locker, move in!” So, that’s what I did. I moved in, and that’s the reason I was down there on the end next to the Arizona. NW: I’m sorry, I forgot to ask, about your siblings. Did you have any siblings growing up? William Freeman 18 WF: Yeah. There was five of us. I was the oldest, and my sister, the next one, she’s dead. And Jim, the other one, he got sick up here, that’s his old van out there, and he had to go to Arizona. His daughter lived in Arizona. Then Jack, the next one, he’s dead. Just him and the second girl have died. Then, my kid brother, he’s out there. He got into the… What is it, Tim? TF: The jet propulsion laboratory? WF: The jet propulsion laboratories. TF: He works with NASA. WF: Yeah, he… NW: Wow. WF: He has three masters degrees. He went to school a lot out there. Not because he’s my brother, but he’s a whiz. MN: He’s probably still going to school! WF: He had a big job there. He was the trajectory engineer when they sent one of the rockets to the moon from that place. He was the trajectory engineer. He figured the angle they go. NW: Wow. WF: He was the smart one of the bunch. TF: And Thomasine… WF: Thomasine… She lives in Sylva. LMR: Oh, she does? WF: Yeah. MN: Right there below Wal Mart. WF: She lives… What’s the name of that place? MN: Barns Cove Road. WF: Barns Cove. MN: You know where McDonald’s is? You turn in the old gravel road. (indistinguishable) WF: Are you from Sylva? Her son’s Tommy. MN: He owns the Well House! NW: I love that place! LMR: Oh yeah. William Freeman 19 MN: Dillard. That’s Thomasine’s son. That’s our first cousin. WF: Not Tommy. MN: Mike. WF: Mike. Tommy owns the Chevrolet place… MN: It’s Mike. WF: Cadillac place in Salisbury. MN: Then John is the lawyer in Asheville. WF: Yeah. He’s the lawyer. AM: Ok. LMR: Ok. LMR: What’s Thomasine’s last name? WF: Dillard. LMR: Dillard. WF: Yeah. Her son is Tommy Dillard, and Bobby is the lawyer. LMR: Ok. WF: Mike runs the Well House. LMR: Well, that’s a good place. WF: Yeah. I’ve been there a few times. MN: You’ll have to tell him you met Bill. LMR: I’ll tell him. WF: Well, is there anything else that I could tell you? NW: Did you have any good sibling childhood stories? Like, anything… LMR: Fights? You looking for fights? NW: Yeah. Something like that. WF: Fights? TF: Pranks? Anything? WF: No. I don’t think so much. Back then… Now, I’m a little different than most of the young guys. My dad died when I was fifteen years old, and there were six kids in the family, and my dad’s gone. You couldn’t get any social security or anything back then because the social William Freeman 20 security and everything went into effect in 1934, and he was self-employed. Back in those days, if you were self-employed you couldn’t get on social security. And, I had to go to work. That’s the reason I had to drive a school bus. I mean, I probably wanted to do if anyway if I could, but I got the job, and I was just about the sole source of support in the family. NW: Wow. WF: We were just about self-sufficient. We raised a few cattle and had two or three milk cows. Then, when I went into the Navy, I made an allotment. They got a small amount, you know. Me being the head of the household, I guess. But that wasn’t the reason I went into the Navy. I went in just to get my high school diploma. TF: I think a good thing… When you… You were in New Orleans when the war ended, weren’t you? WF: No. I was at Glenville, Illinois. TF: Ok. I thought you were in New Orleans when… Well, you told me you were going down the street, and every girl in the world would grab you and kiss you as you were going through. WF: That’s when the war ended. TF: Yeah. I thought you were in New Orleans when that happened? WF: I was. I was in New Orleans, but you said when the war ended. That’s the reason I got transferred to Glenville, Illinois. They made our air station the separation standard. TF: Right. But I’m trying to say when it… When all the celebration was going on, where were you at then? WF: I was in New Orleans. TF: That’s what I thought. That’s a good thing I know. WF: Well, it was a roaring thing there. We went out on liberty a few times, but we went out the night… See, when the war ended they said about two or three days before that that the war had ended, but it hadn’t. We went down there, and they thought it was over. Anyway, I wasn’t out there that night, but it was about two days before that. One of the guys there… They designated some of them as SP’s. They weren’t SP’s, but they needed extra ones. This guy in our outfit… Someone threw a typewriter out of a window. It just about killed him. You could be going down the street like Tim was telling. You’d be walking along, and a woman would grab you and kiss you. We were in uniform, you know. They turned… A lot of streetcars were in New Orleans and they turned the streetcars over, the crowd did. They grabbed it… AM: Wow. WF: About a hundred of them got ahold of it and turned it over in the street. Man, it was some… TF: That’s a scene. William Freeman 21 WF: Something was going. MN: We’ve got another brother that was in the Coast Guard. Mike was the next one after… Well, his baby that died, my brother. I was first, then Robert Thomas, then Mike, and he lived in (indistinguishable). He died two years ago at fifty-seven years old. LMR: Oh no. MN: So, we lost him two years ago. WF: But those were sometimes those war times. You had ought to have been over in Honolulu. You couldn’t walk for the service people over there. Just about everybody around here was in uniform. I mean, of uniform age, you know. AM: Well, thank you very much! NW: Thank you. AM: We appreciate you. NW: It’s been an honor.
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