Jan Burke - Dear Irene

ABOUT AN HOUR later, I was meeting Frank outside the museum doors. It had only taken Hobson Devoe about fifteen minutes to call me back to say we had the go-ahead from Quincy.

Devoe was a skinny twig of a man who looked like a strong breeze would snap him in half. But his eyes had an intelligence in them strong enough to overcome any frailties of his body.

“This museum means a lot to me,” he said, gesturing with a bony hand toward the models of planes and historical photographs along the walls. “It’s important to know where you’ve come from if you ever want to know where you’re going.” He paused and smiled. “Forgive me. You’re not here to see the museum. We have more pressing matters to attend to – and I don’t want you to think I’m ungrateful to be included. I am looking forward to helping you. I haven’t had anything this challenging to work on in years!”

We followed him out of the museum, trying to walk as slowly as he did.

If I had seen a big piece of cheese in one corner of the offices which housed Mercury Aircraft’s Human Resources Department, I wouldn’t have been surprised. The place was a maze. Hobson Devoe took a slow but sure path through the cubicles, dividers, and desks, using a key card to open one locked door after another. I suppose it’s easier to find your way around a place after you’ve spent more than half a century there.

We ended up crowding ourselves into a small office with a computer terminal in it. Devoe put on a pair of glasses that magnified his eyes so much I could count his lashes. How the hell had he seen well enough to walk us back here, I wondered? He sat down at the keyboard, then slowly but steadily entered a series of keystrokes. He grinned up at us.

“Oh, ho! Bet you didn’t think I’d know how to use one of these contraptions, did you?”

“Mercury has records from the 1940s on the computer system?” Frank asked.

“Oh, yes. Unusual, isn’t it? Most places don’t even save those records on paper. But every employee record we’ve ever had is on our system. J.D. Anderson was quite fond of doing statistical studies on personnel.”

That statement raised an eyebrow or two, but he looked between us and said, “Oh, oh, all quite legitimate, I assure you.”

He slowly hunted and pecked a few more keys. Good grief, I thought, Thanatos is going to kill off half of Las Piernas while this old geezer learns to type. “There,” he said with satisfaction. “Now, where would you like to start?”

Frank and I had already discussed this. After some further work on the list of people who called the LPPD, our combined list now had fifteen women war workers’ names on it. But there was a much smaller group of war workers who were unmistakably linked to this case. “With the mothers of the three victims,” I said. “Could we look at Josephine Blaylock’s records?”

Devoe tapped in her name, then moved closer to the screen, its light reflecting off his lenses.

“Born January 11, 1916,” he read, as Frank and I took notes. “Hired October 5, 1942. Widowed. There’s a star here, which indicates that she lost her husband in the war. One child – we could ask about that in those days… oh goodness, don’t let me get started on that subject.”

“What else does it say about her?” I asked.

“Let’s see. She started out at our Los Angeles plant. We had the two large plants then, one here and one in L.A. We had about seven smaller satellite plants as well, in other parts of Southern California.”

“When did she come to Las Piernas?” I asked.

He moved a little closer to the screen. “Transferred to the Las Piernas plant on November 6, 1944. Worked in plating.”

We outlined Josephine Blaylock’s work history, then asked him to look up Bertha Thayer.

“Born June 3, 1918. Hired August 17, 1942.” She was a little younger than Josephine, but as he read on we learned she was, as Hobson had remembered, a war widow. Thelma was her only child. “Started in the L.A. plant,” he went on, “transferred to the Las Piernas plant on November 6, 1944. Worked in several areas, mainly in de-icer assembly, though.”

“Hold it,” Frank said, looking up from his notes. “She transferred on the same day as Josephine Blaylock?”

“Why, yes,” Hobson said.

“Let’s take a look at Gertrude Havens’ records,” I said.

Devoe was working up some speed now, and it took less time to pull up her file.

“Transferred November 6, 1944. Worked in wiring.” His snow white brows drew together. “I don’t know what to make of that November 6 business. Sometimes we would transfer groups of workers as projects ended in one plant and new ones began in the other. Let me take a closer look at their records.”

He typed a command and, indeed, peered closer at the screen. “Mr. Devoe,” I warned, “that’s probably not safe.” He was close enough to leave smudges on the monitor. That close to the screen, even if radiation wasn’t a problem, he’d get static electricity in his nose hairs.

“O-L-Y,” he said to me, then leaned back. “O-L-Y…”

“Beg pardon?”

“O-L-Y. That’s what’s listed as the reason for the transfer.”

“What does it mean?”

“I have no idea,” he said unhappily, clearly outraged that a personnel record could contain something he didn’t understand. “On Leave of… no, I can’t imagine what the Y stands for.”

“Could you tell us the names of any other workers who transferred on that same day?” Frank asked.

He scratched his head, and then tapped in another set of commands. It took the computer just a little longer to come up with matching records.

Thirty-eight names. A short list, but longer than our fifteen.

“Oh my,” he said, frowning, “I forgot to specify females. There are some men on this list. Here’s one from our San Diego plant. I’ll redo that search.”

“Could you also narrow it to those who came from the L.A. plant and who have ‘O-L-Y’ as the reason for leaving?”

He began typing in the search specifications, saying each aloud as he entered them. “And Oly,” he said as he put in the last, then pressed the command to start the search.

Oly. He said it as a word that time, reminding me of other words in my treasure trove of mythological terms.

“Olympic? Olympiad? Olympus?”

Devoe looked at me as if I had conjured a ghost.

“Olympus!” he whispered. “By God, it’s Olympus.”

He stared silently at the screen for a moment, as Frank and I exchanged glances.

“Mount Olympus, home of the gods. Was that the name of a special project?” I asked.

“Perhaps it was,” he said absently, his thoughts obviously drifting for a time. He looked up at me. “Olympus was the name of our child care center.”

The computer beeped and he looked back to the screen. “A list of twenty-five names,” he said, printing them out.

“Why would the child care center be listed as the reason for a transfer?” Frank asked.

He sighed. “That, I’m afraid, is a very sad tale. I had quite forgotten it until Miss Kelly mentioned its name.” He looked between us. “You’re both too young, I suppose. Born in the 1950s?”

We nodded.

“Yes, well, many people your age don’t realize it, but in the years just before and during the war, there were a great many federally funded child care centers.”

“Federally funded child care?” I thought about the defeat of such proposals in the 1970s and since.

“They built them for war workers?”

“Yes, but we had some even before that, as a part of the WPA. After the U.S. entered the war, of course, the number of them grew by leaps and bounds, especially in places like Las Piernas and Los Angeles, where there were so many war-related industries.”