History - The War Years - Part One
by Bob Gunter
(Many people were uprooted and had to move around the country as a result of World War II. The people who came to Sandpoint and Bonner County have become part of the history of the area. Beth May, who now lives in Spokane with her husband, Price, was one of those people who came to Sandpoint as a result of the war. Her story, told in her own words, will bring back memories for many people because her experience was duplicated many times all over the United States.)
I was born and raised in Nebraska, my husband was raised in Nebraska and he was inducted into the Navy. We were to be married when he came home on his boot leave but the Navy saw fit to call him back early and my mother had made my dress and I had all the people invited, and I just wasn't about to go down and have the preacher marry us without wearing my pretty dress and all. So we decided that Price would come back up to Farragut Naval Station, and when he got permanently stationed then I would join him. They stationed him at Farragut as a hospital corpsman in the school there. When he called, I quit my job in Nebraska, and came to Sandpoint.
When I left Lincoln, Nebraska, I was able to get a seat on the train. My mother had made me a white chicken dinner lunch to take, so I'd have something to eat because there was no dining car on the train. When we got to Billings, Montana, we had to change trains. When we got on the train they got all the service men on, all the inductees on, but not all the war workers and I was in trouble being a civilian. I had met two young men from Iowa and they told the conductor that I was their sister and that I was going up to Sandpoint to be with them until they were shipped out. I was the only civilian on the car and the conductor took me out on the back of the train and told me the story of Montana as we were passing through.
I got to Sandpoint about 7 o'clock in the evening and I went to the hotel. There were two hotels at that time in Sandpoint (The Pend Oreille and the Rowland) and the hotels were just full of sailors. Well, I decided that I would sit in the lobby of the hotel and sleep that night and then get in touch with Price out at Farragut the next day. I was sitting there and the clerk at the desk called and asked if I would be interested in staying in a private room in a home and I said "of course." So they took me out to Bill and Bertha Shook's home on 414 Pine Street. When they found out that I had come up to Sandpoint to be married the wheels started turning and by morning we had a church, the Presbyterian Church.
I tried to get in touch with Price but he was in school and unless it was an emergency you could not interrupt any sailor that was in school. So I sat there on the porch all day waiting for him to call because they said they would take a message and I finally got so hungry that I went down to get something to eat and I was sitting in the café eating and the Shore Patrol came in and asked if I was Beth Knight? I said yes and he said, "Will you come with me please?" I thought, what have I done wrong? They took me to the Red Cross office and Pearl O'Donnell was the Red Cross lady and she told me that Price had been trying to reach me but apparently something had gone haywire and he didn't know where I was. She got hold of him and we made arrangements to be married on the following Saturday.
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All photographs have been used with permission of the Bonner County Museum.
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