Betty, Until Now: The Life of Betty Buchheit (1934 Biography)

by Connie L. Fleissner

[A note from the Administrator: Betty, Until Now appears to have been a school assignment for Conrad Fleissner in 1934.]

Her days started back in December 28, 1917, in Chicago. Her mother was of pure Yankee blood from way back when and her father was of German descent. Her parents called her Elizabeth Perkins Buchheit, Perkins her [grand]mother’s maiden name, but now she is known just as “Betty.”

During her very young days her chief trait was getting into trouble. At the age of five she ran away at every opportunity and her mother or her grandmother, who resided with her, would have to go blocks to find her. Finally her mother [decided to tie her] to a rope to keep her in the yard. Then Mrs. Buchheit went into the house to finish making some strawberry jam. A few moments later the telephone rang. It was the neighbor across the street. Betty had just fallen on her steps and had cut herself badly. Mrs. Buchheit rushed across the street to find her loosed daughter covered with strawberry jam that had been set out to cool. That was the so-called “blood”.

During the same year while visiting some relatives she met her second cousin for the first time. Betty being somewhat boyish was not liked as well by her relatives as her dainty cousin. Betty’s mother was in suspense most of the day, fearing her daughter would get into some trouble. Her thoughts were not incorrect, for as Betty and her mother were leaving, little Betty yanked her cousin’s long curls very hard and actually pulled out a handful of hair! She had won the complete disrespect of her relatives.

A number of months later Mrs. Buchheit baked a cake for a church supper. She frosted it and went upstairs to get dressed. When she returned, she found the cake cleaned of frosting around the side. She asked Betty if she had done it, but she firmly denied it. Then she asked Betty what the Lord would say about it; The answer was she had looked all around and hadn’t seen the Lord yet!

When she was about eight years old, she developed a liking for playing circus with the Wilkinson boys who lived across the street. They dwelled on the jumping acts and Betty [decided] to be a real jumper. She climbed to the top of an apple tree adjoining the house about twenty feet above the ground. Down she went but luckily the branches broke her fall and her parents didn’t hear about this act until years later.

Grammar school days started with bang – of trouble! A girl took Betty’s primer and tore a number of pages out of it. Betty waited after school for her, seized her book and made a huge rip in it.

While she was in third grade, she received a dog that gave her many amusing experiences. He would always dash after the fire engine as it would roared by. One day the engine had to stop to prevent running over “Spot”, another time he came riding home on the engine! A number of times her dog followed her to school, as did Mary’s famous lamb, and actually came in the building amusing both the teachers and the pupils.

Her grades in Grammar school ranged from good to very good. She always got along quite well with all the teachers and the pupils.

In eighth grade in the old Grant Place School she had a rather unusual experience. The social science teacher, Mrs. Hausen, became very anger and hurled a heavy desk pad and calendar at her!

Betty, light complected, reserved, and a bit boyish, entered high school in the summer of 1932. Her frosh year went by very smoothly. Now she is in her sophomore year and getting along very nicely. Biology is the subject she likes the most, though she finds geometry interesting and plans to take two more years of mathematics; she detests algebra.

One day in public speaking she forgot to prepare for a debate. She told Bob Randolph of her sad plight; he quickly [gave] her half of his material and they both got along fine. She terms this one of her most nervous moments.

She likes to play and watch the sports at school. She especially likes to watch football games and to play hockey. Her ability in sports is not very high, she claims. But, she made the hockey team as there were no other goalies is her story.

Betty seems to have no special fear or fears – other than of the teachers now and then.

She likes all types of music, especially baud and classical, her favorite selection being “Poet and Prince Overture.” Nature poems by Longfellow and Whittier appeal to her. She reads many biographies and other non-fiction books, though her favorite book, “Within this Presence” by Barnes is fiction. Ever since she was in fifth grade, her hero in history has been Alexander the Great. For some reason she took a liking to him when she saw a picture of him with curls.

Once Betty saw Helen Wills Moody, the great tennis star. Her dominant appearance made quite an impression on Betty. She also likes Will Rogers and George Arliss of the screen very much.

If she could change places with any at the moment, she said she would like to be Katherine Rawls, the low board diving star. Betty likes the water very much. In fact she liked it so much when she was two she almost drowned when she wandered out over her head.

It seems she likes all food, even spinach! Nothing suits her better than to eat outdoors under a sparkling blue sky, her favorite color.

Betty likes sculpturing and would like to dig up ruins of old cities for museums and [it?] would bring her in contact with this work. She will see other work through, especially if [it?] has money connected with it! School work can wait until the last night. It makes her very angry to be told to do a thing twice.

Betty in her decade and a half of life has had her full share of pets. Dogs, cats, chickens, ducks, turkeys, rabbits, and a horse have all been hers. She likes to keep them for the pleasure and amusement they afford. Another hobby of hers is carving and sculpturing at which she is talented, though her mother complains now and then because of the disappearance of her soap. Betty is a good artist, especially at drawing landscapes. Besides these hobbies, she has studied piano but practicing doesn’t appeal to her. She also took tap dancing for a while.

Every summer for the past eight years or so [the] Buchheits have been spending their vacation at a lake in northern Wisconsin. Once while going there they stopped at a hotel. A rabbit Betty was taking escaped, providing a really embarrassing situation. Another time, her dog “Spot” killed a skunk. The dog lived outside for two weeks afterward.

While horseback riding with Helen Everhard, they were chased by a hermit in the lonely North Woods. She relates this as one of her most lovely moments.

Betty has visited most of the states nearby Illinois; of all the places she has been, she believes she likes the little town of Pioneer, Ohio best. It’s but a crossroads town which lives up to its name in style.

Her father has told her much of his visits to Germany; she has a longing to go there someday, perhaps in a sailing vessel of one of the many sea books she has read.

And what does the future hold???

This of course cannot be called “The end” for her life holds more.

Freedom

(as told by Elizabeth Perkins Buchheit)

The best thing about my life is I was free. Nobody picked on me. Nobody said you’ve got to do this or you’ve got to do that and you felt in your heart that it had to amount to something.

My family had a lot of people live with us in Park Ridge. We had black people, white people and relatives. There were so many people without places to live. We had one bathroom. And I remember somebody asked my mother, “Do you use the same bathroom?” This was before civil rights. People were very touchy. But my mother said, “Of course! Of course!”

GREAT-GRANDMA WALKER had a friend that worked with her as a seamstress. She was a black lady who had come up from the south and she was working to save money to buy her husband’s freedom. She made two or three cents an hour and had to save $300. During the civil rights movement I used to say to Vernon, I think those intolerant people have to be born again. They cannot be converted. They’re just going to have to let ‘em go.

In President’s George W. Bush’s cabinet I think that some of ‘em just don’t get it about women’s rights or gay rights or anybody else’s rights. They just don’t understand that everybody is a human and needs their own rights.

VERNON WORK MYERS: I think with Bush we have an atrocious situation. I dislike him so much. I don’t know how he got elected for a second term.

As long as it doesn’t hurt anybody, that’s the way it should be. That’s the way I was raised. 100% free. Lucky, lucky me.

That’s the best thing about Vernon. He never paid much attention. He didn’t know whether I had high shoes or low shoes. “Where you going?” “I’m going over to the county court.” I used to go testify on environmental issues all the time. There always used to be articles written in the paper about me. Half of it was a bunch of hogwash. But anyway, Vernon wouldn’t know anything about it. He just wouldn’t pay any attention. He was on an entirely different level which was great.

United States Presidents

(as told by Vernon Work Myers)

I don’t remember Hoover but he spoke like an undertaker. The stock market would go down every time he spoke. Roosevelt was so different. He was a great orator. People either liked or disliked Roosevelt. It was hard to find anyone in between. My family tended to vote Republican but I think my parents voted for Roosevelt. I remember when he spoke when he was first elected: “The only thing we have to fear is fear itself.” He was a spellbinder. He spoke with a very upper class accent. He didn’t speak like we did. In the science lab we used to call him Antimony. Antimony is Sb. You didn’t want to say the other meaning for Sb.

Harry Truman wasn’t a great speaker either but he was a very capable person.

ELIZABETH PERKINS BUCHHEIT: Harry Truman was the last president that never went to college.

(as told by Elizabeth Perkins Buchheit)

John F. Kennedy was a spellbinder and everybody was very taken with him and the rest of his family.  His father was a big crook.  He made all his money on Prohibition with the syndicate, the mob.  He was rum running from Canada and was able to get contracts when Prohibition ended.  He wanted to get his son Joe elected but Joe died in an accident in WWII.  Joe was flying with unknown cargo and it exploded over the channel.  So then they went to John.  John’s father wanted to be appointed Ambassador to Great Britain.  So he got appointed as ambassador and in Great Britain they thought he was the densest thing they’d ever seen.

After the War

(as told by Elizabeth Perkins Buchheit)

After Vernon and I were married, we lived in Park Ridge for one year because after the war we couldn’t find a place to live.  There was a big group of people looking for houses.  My father and mother had room so we stayed with them.

Vernon went down to work at the University of Chicago where the first nuclear reactor was at Argonne Laboratories.  After work, we used to play badminton with our neighbors the Harphams every night.  Not every other night but every night.  Then after the game, we’d all have a beer.

VERNON WORK MYERS:  Somehow the women did very well after it got dark.

ELIZABETH PERKINS BUCHHEIT:  That’s right.  We could see better in the night than you guys could.

We got so good that by the time we left for Pennsylvania, the Harphams were entering big tournaments.  Vernon had a lot of offers to teach but he accepted the offer to work at Penn State University.

Life in Physics

(as told by Vernon Work Myers)

It was sort of by chance that I got into physics.    Geneva College was close to where I lived so that’s where I went as an undergraduate.  I took a physics course and worked as a lab assistant in the physics lab.  I got paid a $1 an hour.  $1 an hour was considered not bad in those times.   When I was a freshman or sophomore at Geneva College, I was in a mob scene in the play Enemy of the People.    That was the only dramatic thing I’ve ever done.  I didn’t play a big role.

After I graduated from Geneva College, I went to Syracuse University in 1940 for two years to get a master’s degree.  My tuition was covered but I had to teach laboratory science.  I was paid $60 a month for 10 months or $600 a year.  Classes weren’t that long.  I would grade papers and work in the laboratory.  Syracuse was very nice until Thanksgiving and then a big snow came.  I remember I didn’t have the right kind of boots for it.  At Syracuse, I went out with an undergraduate named Eleanor Love.  She lived in New Castle and knew how to fly a plane.  Unfortunately her father embezzled money.  He was sent to prison.

Syracuse didn’t offer a doctorate so then I went to Yale.   I think Cornell was my first choice but I ended up going to Yale.  My professor Henry Margenau showed me a letter that he had written to Albert Einstein.  It was a beautiful letter that was in the old German script.  I couldn’t read it but it looked beautiful.  Einstein never liked quantum mechanics.  He thought something else would be developed that would go back to all classical physics but no one’s found a way of doing that.  I studied quantum mechanics at Yale.   I graduated in 1947 when I was 28.

But people don’t understand.  They think you must be rich to go to such a school.

ELIZABETH PERKINS BUCHHEIT:  Remember when you got that letter from Yale saying, Vernon, we’d like to have a donation of about $10,000 from you?

VERNON WORK MYERS:  It should’ve been sent to the Bush family.

During the war, I worked in the Naval research laboratory.   There were all kinds of laboratories in Washington that were controlled by the Navy at that time.  Two afternoons a week we did drilling and marching and that kind of thing.  From 1947 to 1948 I worked in Argonne Laboratory in Chicago and then I taught at Penn State for 15 years.  I also spent a year at the Brookhaven Lab on Long Island.  Then I look a job with the government in the Bureau of Standards

Buchheit – Myers Wedding and Honeymoon

(as told by Elizabeth Perkins Buchheit)

Vernon and I were married on June 6, 1947 in St. Mary’s Episcopal Church in Park Ridge, Illinois. We had a very nice rehearsal dinner beforehand. One of Vernon’s colleagues from the Argonne Laboratory in Chicago came to the wedding and got sprayed by a skunk. He was wearing a tuxedo. He tried to get it cleaned but nobody would take it.

Our reception was held at the Park Ridge Country Club. Everybody danced all night. At the reception, I threw the bouquet with an overhand pitch. Somebody took the picture of it and you can see all the ribbons and everything flying off. That’s alright.

My cousin Hilda gave us the money to go on a honeymoon. Guess where we went? We got a honeymoon trip on a boat to Cuba! Wow. We just loved every minute of it. We stayed in a little hotel downtown, a real Cuban hotel. Vernon had strep throat on the boat and I told him don’t say a word ‘cause they won’t let you off. They’ll quarantine you, you know. They wouldn’t let anybody off with any infection in those days.

So he didn’t say a word and we went to hotel. The hotel owner got the doctor. The doctor came up and looked at Vernon. He had a great big cigar hanging out of his mouth. He told Vernon to open his mouth really wide. So both the doctor and the cigar looked at Vernon’s throat. The doctor then gave him something called Aspergum. It was so good. It cured him. He got better, anyhow, and carried on.

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The Buchheits and the Myers Meet

(as told by Elizabeth Perkins Buchheit)

When you’re going with a guy and you’re a girl it used to be that he would always come over to your house to take you out.  I don’t know what the mores are nowadays.  But the day he invites you over to his house, that’s when you consider, well, this might be serious.  And the guy’s parents might think that too.

I remember the first time I went to Vernon’s house out in Pennsylvania everything went wrong.  His father Dan was so mad and so upset.  Dan had a little well that he himself had dug which you did not drink out of but supplied water to the rest of the house.  So with the well broken, there was no plumbing except the outside plumbing and the privy.  Dan was so embarrassed and upset, the poor guy.  Vernon’s mother wanted everything nice, too, of course.

Don’t ask me why they called Vernon’s father “Dan.”  His real name was Clinton.  They always had the funniest nicknames for everybody.  Marjorie’s nickname was Deezee.   Marion’s nickname was Hun.  Yup.  Vernon’s nickname was Tootie.  You don’t need to tell him I told you that.

I thought that Vernon’s family and his home were wonderful.  If you’re going to be poor, always remember this: it’s better to be poor in the country.  A kid can have a great time in the country.  In the summer, Vernon would never wear shoes.  Never at all.  Just wear his bare feet.  At Christmas, his father always gave him a present of shoes.

My parents were glad to see Vernon.

Betty and Vernon

(as told by Elizabeth Perkins Buchheit)

My friends and I went to the junior officer’s club once in a while. We all belonged. If you were too old you couldn’t belong. That is if you were too far along in the hierarchy of officers, you couldn’t belong. So it was just for the like the ensign and the junior-grade lieutenant and the senior-grade lieutenant in the Navy. My rank was a junior-grade lieutenant and Vernon was an ensign. I outranked him always simply because of the timing. It was all based on when you joined and how long you’d been in and all that kind of business.

It is of note that this club was in a very rickety place. It was sort of made out of sticks and barrels. A bunch of nice women were behind it like General Marshall’s wife. Someone who did absolutely nothing and was a rather vapid woman as was Mrs. Eisenhower. She spent the war in Colorado. I don’t think she was skiing. She was just sort of like the Bush family, hiding out.

In April, my friends and I were at the club and Vernon and Carl Muehlhause came over to our table. Vernon asked me to dance and Carl asked my very dear friend Tet Barris to dance. They would’ve made a good pair, I think. Carl and Carolyn Lyon were going together too. He was crazy for her ‘cause she was very beautiful. That was nice. They were married.

The junior officer’s club had a little music and I remember that nobody ever knew how to drink anything. Vernon was brought up in a household where there wasn’t a molecule of any kind of C2H5OH. But that’s okay. He caught on in a hurry. I always ordered something called a Claret Lemonade. It was lemonade with a dash, and I mean just a dash, of Claret wine in it. Made it look very pretty, besides tasting pretty good too. So that was the way it was.

People went to Rock Creek Park for dates and walked around, rode bicycles or rented canoes at the Canoe Club. That’s the kind of thing you did. Nobody had money and there was no place in war time to go. But everybody had a good time anyhow.

Vernon and I were engaged in the fall sometime.

In the Navy

(as told by Elizabeth Perkins Buchheit)

It was a different time then. It was complete mobilization in the great country of the USA and Canada. I was working in Chicago at the DuPont paint factory and I wanted to broaden my life a little. So I decided I would join the military.

The first day they accepted women I went to enlist and got turned down because I wore glasses. So I waited about 10 days and then they gave waivers out for glass-wearing folks. I remember I had a long, tan purse which was usually full of junk. And the man said, “Well, you don’t quite weigh enough. You weigh about 110 pounds.” I don’t know in those days what the bottom limit was. He said, “Just take your purse and step on the scale.” So I did and that made it. Yes.

I was in the Navy and it was marvelous. We all lined up at Northwestern Station, marched in, got on the train and went to Smith College. Smith College is in North Hampton, Massachusetts. That became the midshipman’s school. It was one of the most beautiful places I’ve ever seen or ever been. When I was in the Berkshire Mountains, I just wondered, how did anybody ever return to Park Ridge? They wouldn’t want to leave that beautiful place. They even had crew at Smith College and I thought, wasn’t that wonderful? I’d have joined the crew if I had the chance. It was quite an experience.

Grace Coolidge, Calvin Coolidge’s wife, lived in North Hampton and she was a very good friend of my mother’s friend. So she entertained us all at afternoon tea and that was pretty neat too. Wow, there you go. You know, you do different things.

When I was a kid, I was very active in Girl Scouts. I joined at 10. It meant a lot to me. I was an only child and I made a lot of friends there. We had a really good Girl Scout troop and did a lot of things and I learned a lot about nature and the stars and all that stuff. I was one of two who went all the way through. I became a Golden Eaglette. I have it in my safe deposit box.

So when I got to midshipman’s school, I knew about lining up and right dress and all that business. And before you knew it, I got to be Company Commander so that was alright. It was kind of fun because there was a lot of snow all over the New England states at that time and we had boots and marched along in the streets. You had to be sure that the kids that you were directing weren’t marching into automobiles, among other things. You had to use a lot of crazy commands like left oblique march, oblique. Now that’s a good one, isn’t it?

We did a lot of neat things. The head of the midshipman’s school, which there was only one in the country, was a man, a commander. He was mad as a wet hen at having to parade a lot of women around. He didn’t like it at all and he was very, very strict. He used to come by for inspection. And there were four of us in a room and we’d all line up, you know, all in our best. We had to make our beds so tight that a quarter would bounce on ‘em.

I remember one day we all lined up and he came by for inspection. He always wore a white Navy suit, naturally, so any dust would show up on him. He got down on the floor, amazingly enough, and rolled around a little bit to be sure there wasn’t any dirt on the floor. We all stood there of course. And then down came a dust bunny. This one very cute girl in our group, Peg, just opened her mouth and caught it so he never saw it!

But we had a lot of fun. Among other things, they had to make up a lot of stuff to do in case we were accosted by pirates. They had a lot of rope nettings on the side of the ship. They threw one over the balcony in the auditorium and you had to climb up and down that silly thing. But you had to jump out and that took quite a lot of courage to jump out of the balcony and hopefully you would grab onto this thing on the way down and then climb back up and board the ship, being the balcony. People do a lot of crazy things, you know. Especially if it’s cheap. See nobody had any money in those days for arming all this business.

We all graduated on time. People that were “bilged out” as we said, who quit or left, or were asked to leave, were people who really couldn’t do the physical end of it. I remember I played my last basketball game there and it was so strenuous that during the intermission I just lay down on the floor and panted.

We were all sent to various stations. Every single person in the communications end of the Navy, and I’ve forgotten how many ships we had exactly at sea but we’ll say something like 2,000, were manned by WAVES. The women knew where every ship and every person was in the Navy at any given time, which was quite a feat when you think of it. You had to know every kind of a ship and every kind of plane. And what’s more, I still do. Communications was very, very important. They used to say, it may never have won a battle but it certainly lost a lot of ‘em. We met a lot of nice, young people and we learned a lot.

I ended up in the ONI which is the Office of Naval Intelligence. I think the CIO, the one that’s running around today, is the dumbest outfit I’ve ever heard of. We’d have lost for sure if they’d had people like that in our Naval intelligence. But anyhow, it was a real eye opener and we met a lot of interesting people.

There was no place to live in Washington, not even a chicken coop. We had to live in the barracks for a while but then you had to live on your own. They kicked you out of the barracks. It was unbelievable, you know. The showers were for like 10 people but they did have hot water. Betty Brook, Betty Cowie and I lived in the basement of a house up in the northeast part of Washington. That was kind of funny because every time we’d come home the landlady was, of course, trying to make a million off the rentals.

So that was my experience. I got out in 1946. The war was over in 1945 and I met Vernon in 1945 and all of that.

The Works Progress Administration

(as told by Vernon Work Myers)

My father CLINTON worked on the WPA and on roads.  The WPA paid about $30 a month to the people.  Not much, but it was very good.  It kept people employed.  The WPA deliberately used a lot of hand labor, like having the people work with sledge hammers.

The WPA also employed orchestras and symphonies.  I saw the WPA orchestra play at college.  They sang We Believe Mose Kicked the Bucket and that brought the house down.

We Believe Mose Kicked the Bucket
We Believe Mose Kicked the Bucket
Old Man Mose is Dead

It was amazing that they employed musicians.