KAREN:  So what grade did you go through in school in McGrath? 

ROSE:  I finished 8th grade when daddy sent us -- daddy sent five of us to Jessie Lee Home in Seward. 

KAREN:  Jessie Lee Home? 

ROSE:  Jessie Lee Home, it was a Methodist-run school.  Really fine place.  And it was great.  I liked it.  And after I got used to it, of course.  Got used to living there. 

There was about 20 workers, but I don't know if there was 100 kids or a hundred all together with the kids and the workers, you know. 

KAREN:  Uh-hum.

ROSE:  They were all run -- they were all run by the Methodist Church.  It was a nice -- I learned a lot there in the few years I was there. 

Lots of parents sent their kids to Holy Cross, to the mission, because that was the Catholic -- Catholic-run mission.  But daddy was Methodist, so he sent us to Jessie Lee Home, which was good for us. 

KAREN:  And what grade did you -- how long were you at the Jessie Lee Home? 

ROSE:  I was just there two or three years, and I decided to get married.  I had a hard time adjusting in school, to a bigger school and stuff.  I thought I wasn't good enough and I got engaged and got married.  Got married at 17.  I'm sure if daddy had been living, I wouldn't have gotten married so young.  You know.  It was too young. 

KAREN:  So your father had passed away already?

 
ROSE:  He passed away a year after he sent us over there. 

KAREN:  Oh. 

ROSE:  He was old -- like I said, he was 30 years older than mamma. 

KAREN:  And so who did you marry? 

ROSE:  I married a young fella that had -- was raised in Jessie Lee Home. 
See, the Jessie Lee Home had originated down in -- down in the Aleutians there.  And then in 1924, they moved the home up to Seward.  Nice, up on the hill up there.  It overlooked the town.  It was a nice place. 

KAREN:  And was that Mr. Winkleman?
 
ROSE:  No, no, that was my -- that was one of my later husbands. 

KAREN:  Oh, okay.

ROSE:  That was Hughes.  He was -- he was half Aleut and half English.  His dad was English.  His mother was Aleut.  And there was five of them kids.  Five of the Hugheses. 

KAREN:  And then when did you -- when you got married, did you stay in Seward?  Or...

ROSE:  Yeah, I stayed there another five years after that.  I moved back to McGrath after the war broke out in 1941.  I moved -- I moved in '42.  So.  It was quiet and nice in McGrath then. 

KAREN:  Why did you decide to move back? 

ROSE:  Shortly after.  Shortly after the war broke out. 

KAREN:  Why -- but why? 

ROSE:  My husband and I got divorced. 

KAREN:  Uh-hum. 

ROSE:  I had two children.  We moved back there. 

And I worked -- I didn't have much education, like I said, I quit school, but all I -- there wasn't much work -- excuse me.  There wasn't much work for anybody in McGrath, but I cooked.  I cooked in the roadhouse, in a couple roadhouses there.  Cooked meals, and that's how I did most of the time. 

Then the next year after I moved up there, they built a big runway in McGrath.  They just had a small runway before that and during the war, they needed a bigger one because there were -- they were shipping these -- they were coming through McGrath and going to Galena, flying planes to Russia or somewhere, you know. 

KAREN:  Oh, that Lend-Lease? 

ROSE:  I don't know if that was Lend-Lease or what it was. 

KAREN:  Yeah. 

ROSE:  Maybe that Lend-Lease was something else.  But they were -- they were flying -- they were shipping airplanes over to Russia.  And that made a lot of activity.  They had they had a small Army base in McGrath. 

KAREN:  Yeah, I didn't know that. 

ROSE:  There was about 200 all together, officers and enlisted men.  And they were just there for a couple years. 

KAREN:  Hmm. 

ROSE:  And they had communications.
 
KAREN:  And so did you do --

ROSE:  It -- it's not -- it wasn't FAA then, C -- C -- CCA or something, before FAA communication system.  There was three houses.  They had three houses.  When I moved back, the three families lived there in the CAA.  That's what it was.  Civil communications system.  And then they had the Weather Bureau.  They had some Weather Bureau houses.  And they are building the -- enlarging the runway. 

And I worked at the roadhouse at once for a whole year, they were -- there were about 80 -- 80 working men there.  Morrison-Knutson.  And I was just -- I didn't have to cook there, thank goodness, they had a man cook.  I waited tables and did beds and all that stuff. 

Not for the working men.  They had their own -- they had built four separate places for the working men to -- to live in.  But they ate there in the restaurant.  So that livened up the town some. 

They had a couple roadhouses, Jack Morris'.  And Dave Cloud had built the first roadhouse, moved over from the other side, oh, a few years before that, before the town moved over to the other side of the river because every year it flooded.  Almost every year there when they had high water, the Old McGrath flooded.  And we were up in our homestead was higher ground.  Some of the families had come up and spent the time with us.  It was nice.