As the war in Europe was winding down in the spring of 1945, exhausted troops probably thought they were immune to being shocked. But knowledge of the atrocities committed in Nazi concentration camps was on the horizon. Nothing could have prepared them for that.

Hank Josephs of Corpus Christi served in Intelligence & Reconnaissance during the war and recalls checking out reports of a concentration camp near the town of Dachau in late April of '45:

"We got there, and the first thing we saw was a sign over the entrance which says, Work Will Make You Free, ‘Arbeit Macht Frei.' We went through the gate, and we shot a few Germans. They were escaping. I looked at the—at the prisoners in their striped garb, so filthy and decimated. One of them moved. And I went over to him, and he said, ‘Bist a Yid?' Are you Jewish? I said, ‘Ich bin a Yid.' I am Jewish. And then I told him, ‘Alles geet. Alles geet.' I speak a little Yiddish. ‘Alles geet. Alles geet.' All is good. All is good. And I opened my C ration and fed him a little soup. And I asked him what his name was. He said, ‘Meine namen ist Herman.' ‘Ich.' My name is Herman, too. He died two hours later in my arms."

Wilson Canafax of Fort Worth was a member of the 1110th Engineer Combat Group and heard about the Buchenwald concentration camp shortly after it was liberated. He decided to go see what it was and describes encountering a former inmate:

"Before I got to the front entrance, there was a young fellow, came up to me speaking perfect English. And he said, ‘I see you have a cross on your lapel. Are you a chaplain?' I said yes. He said, ‘Think you could do us a favor?' I said, ‘Well, I can try.' It turned out that this person talking to me was the young fellow Eliezer Wiesel, who's known better today as Elie Wiesel. And he said, ‘I'd like to take you through some parts of the camp here.' Went through the main entrance, and as you've heard the expression ‘dead men walking,' that's the way the people looked. I went to several of them, some who could speak English, and I'd talk a little bit with them."

Canafax explains he also led Jewish worship services, which was the second request of the young man:

"So many of them had—wanted nothing to do with religion, but those who were genuine in their faith and there was the opportunity to come to a worship service, they came. We got our carryalls, those big trucks, and put the people who could be carried in those things to a place where we could have a worship service. They had to be lifted on. They had to be carried on, crying. They never thought they'd be alive. And we had some little prayer books that were distributed among those that wanted them. And on one side of it was Hebrew, Hebrew prayers. The other side was English. So as they went through the service in Hebrew, then I could follow along in English itself. They cried. They shouted. When they got through, they just raising hands, sort of like our Pentecostals today raise their—they were just raising their hands in joy."

When the Nazi camps were liberated in Europe, Americans were encouraged to visit them, creating thousands of witnesses to this dark chapter of history.

This edition of Living Stories was made possible by a grant from the Texas Holocaust and Genocide Commission to the Institute for Oral History.

Josephs recalls the first time he entered the infamous gate into Dachau Concentration Camp.

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During cold weather, most people want to huddle inside around heat sources, but some jobs force people to brave the elements.

Waco businessman and historian Roger Conger delivered groceries for J. C. Crippen & Sons as a teenager in the 1920s. He recalls a winter delivery to Waco High English teacher Marie Leslie that can only be described as a learning experience:

"Her house was on the west side of North Eighteenth Street right across from Providence Hospital. And I pulled across the street to the wrong side of the street, it was. In other words, I was heading north, and it's a steep, downward hill there. And I pulled against the curb, and there was ice on the curbs that particular Saturday. Was a cold, cold day. I left my engine running, and I pulled the combination clutch release and brake of a Model T, which is to your left hand. I pulled that up and thought that I had locked the brakes. Left the engine running, went around to the back, got her order off, and went inside Miss Leslie's house and delivered her groceries. And when I came back out of her house, to my consternation, I couldn't see any truck. I hurried out to the curb, and I looked down the hill, and there was a filling station at the foot of the hill down there, and I saw a crowd of people around in this gasoline station. And with my box in my hand I ran down the hill and found that my truck, still loaded with Crippen groceries, had careened down this icy hill into that filling station, crashed into the back of an automobile that was getting some gasoline in it, and had thrown my load of groceries all over that end of Waco. (laughter)"

Fortunately, both the driver of the vehicle and Mr. Crippen were very understanding.

In the late thirties, George McDowell of Houston, a recent West Point graduate, was stationed at Fort Sill in Oklahoma with the 18th Field Artillery, a horse-drawn regiment. One of his assignments concerned a horse-drawn unit at Fort Sam Houston in Texas, the 12th Field Artillery, which was becoming motorized and had equipment and horses it no longer needed:

"Our battery was designated to drive down from Fort Sill to Fort Sam Houston, pick up 246 horses, 8 guns, and 16 wagons and march them overland back to Fort Sill, Oklahoma, right in the dead of winter. When we got down to Fort Sam Houston, we found out that half of these horses we were going to take back had never been in draft pulling a gun or wagon or anything. So after we left Fort Sam Houston, we—first day, we only made about sixteen miles; the next time, about twenty-four. And we were hitting about thirty to thirty-two miles a day. But we'd try to bivouac by three o'clock in the afternoon. But then it got below freezing at times, and we weren't sleeping worth a damn. And you didn't have sleeping bags in those days. You just wrapped up in blankets and other things like that and did the best you could. The horses were not taking that cold weather. So every morning we'd have a—almost a rodeo getting hitched up. It was dark, and daylight didn't come till about seven o'clock. And so that march taught me, I said, ‘Well, I sure don't want to go to war with horses.' (laughs)"

Shortly after this operation, McDowell was transferred to the army air corps as an ordnance officer and served in North Africa, Italy, and the Pentagon in World War II.

During a wintertime assignment, George McDowell saw firsthand the challenges of using horses in combat.

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Many memories from our youth are intertwined with those of school, the place where we were making friends and developing interests.

Waco native Helen Geltemeyer shares a treasured memory from her schooldays:

"My earliest memories of Bell's Hill is going to school, walking every morning and with our dog, Tex, following my sister and I and maybe my brother. And the dog would stand at the door of this far end, the east end of the school, and we'd say, Tex, go home! And he'd finally go home. Every day that dog went to school with us. And I loved that school because you could see one end to the other. And the floors were just so clean and nice, and we had such a good time. All my teachers were—seemed to be so lovely."

She recalls her older brother Ross and his friends:

"And a lot of them had donkeys around there across the street. My brother was one of them. They loved to take their donkey to school, Hardy Jones and he, to feed—they were under these mesquite trees. They'd go over there and water them. We thought that was so funny for them to get to do it. It was just for the fun and heck of it. (laughter) They finally quit that, but I always would beg my brother to let me sit on his donkey. And he'd let me sit, and all his boyfriends would be standing around."

Manuel Hernandez, whose family moved from Mexico when he was three years old, describes his school years at Mt. Carmel and Elm Mott and his struggle to learn English:

"The teacher's didn't want to travel to that school. One of them decide to stay the whole week, and they rent the room. It was a nice community. But I couldn't learn English because half of the kids were Mexican people, and the others were white. We get along okay, but we separate on, kind of, the language. That was my problem, that I couldn't learn the English language until I moved to Elm Mott, where it was only three Spanish people in the school. So we had to learn it. And I was already about eleven years old, and being in the first grade, it make you feel bad. Of course, we had some Czech people that had same problems I had because they were speaking at home Czech and English at school. So it was kind of combination of language."

Hernandez left the Elm Mott school during the early days of the Great Depression to find work and help his family financially. Geltemeyer eventually graduated from Waco High in the mid-thirties. Through the years, they carried with them the memories of those formative days in school.

A Southern 1920s classroom.

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Pawnbroking—or lending money on portable security—is one of the world's oldest professions. It can be traced back to Ancient Greece and the Roman Empire in the West and to China three thousand years ago in the East.

Hank Josephs of Corpus Christi remembers he got the idea to change his family's dry goods store into a pawn shop during WWII:

"Our sergeant would lend the guys five bucks on their watches, their service watches, and when they got paid two weeks later, they'd pay him back ten dollars. I said, ‘That's a hell of a deal. I want in on that deal.'"

Josephs recalls one of the more bizarre stories that came out of the shop:

"The one in which a guy walked in and said, ‘I want to borrow five bucks on my eye.' Had a prosthetic eye. Pulled it out of his head. He had gotten it in the service. He says, ‘I want five dollars; I need a—need a bottle of wine.' I loaned him five dollars on the wine. Some people came in later—he never did come back. People came in later and said, What's the strangest thing you ever took in? I pull out the box with the eye in it. I said, ‘Here,' and showed them the prosthetic eye, which was a beautiful brown eye with veins running through it. So we had some farmers come in and they had seen the eye, and they were looking for a wedding set. I told them, I say, if they bought the wedding set, I'd give them the eye. So sure enough they bought a wedding set, I gave them the eye, and that was the last of that."

Robert Cogswell of Austin explains a problem he had in the 1970s:

"I had this sophisticated instrument, but I was not a sophisticated guitar player. And I worried about my guitar. It was such a nice instrument that I didn't want it to get stolen. So I carried it with me a lot of the time, even when I was riding bicycles, and I was worried about it getting smashed or broken or damaged. It was an unhealthy relationship for a person who was already married. It was like I had this guitar on the side."

Cogswell describes finding a $15 answer to his dilemma hanging in a pawn shop:

"This Gretsch was made of something like three-eighths-inch plywood. It didn't pick up sound very well. In other words, it's a very quiet guitar, which is perfect for a person who can't play well."

He relates how he was a bit apprehensive at first to purchase it:

"I said, ‘This guitar is not the way it was when it was built. It's much better. The person who owned it really loved it because it's worn at this point, and it's worn at that point, and he has adjusted the nut and he's adjusted the strings so that they fit this guitar right. So that person loves this guitar, and I don't want to buy it out from under that person, if he's coming back to get it.' And he said, ‘No, you can buy this one. The guy who left that guitar has pawned it here five times. And he brought it in this time and said, "Okay, you can sell it this time because I'm taking this money straight to the bus station, and I'm going back home to Kentucky."'"

The recent economic slump has boosted business for pawn shops and has led to the appearance of online pawnbrokers. The industry has also been aided by popular TV shows like Pawn Stars.

Robert Cogswell found a guitar perfectly suited for his needs at a pawn shop.

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Some of the clearest memories from our youth usually include times we got in trouble.

Victor Newman of Waco grew up amidst cowboys in West Texas. In 1923, at the age of ten, he came to live at the recently opened Waco State Home. Newman explains how the home reacted to his cowboy ways:

"Well, every time I turned around, well, somebody would grab me up and give me a spanking because of something that I said. And so finally, well, one man there, he spanked me one day. He said, ‘Do you know why I spanked you?' I says, ‘Yeah, because you're bigger than I am.' He said no. He—but they realized the language I was using was what I had heard all my life out there on the ranch. I didn't know I was saying anything wrong."

Benny Martinez of Goliad recalls getting caught in his brief life of crime in the 1940s:

"I remember once, my brother and I were stealing watermelons—and that's something we country boys did. We used to go in the river here by the rail—where the train crossed, and we were naked as a jaybird. We'd go across the river, up the hill, and we'd go down and crawl in the grass, and go in and grab a couple of watermelons. And this man had hundreds of them. And we'd crawl back and get in the river and let them cool off, and then we'd break them open, you know, and we'd eat them. And the old man told my daddy, ‘Your boys are coming over and stealing my watermelons. They think I don't see them, but I see them.' ‘I'll take care of them.'

"'I don't want you boys going over there and stealing any—' ‘No, sir.' That put an end to that. My father put that strap on me once. One time he whipped me, and that was it. He made a believer out of me. I didn't want no more of that."

Waco native Helen Geltemeyer describes a scrape she, her youngest brother, and two of his friends got themselves into in the 1930s:

"One day my brother, oldest brother, had a brand new car—Ford. And I don't know why he left it at home, but Mama had gone to town shopping. And there that car sat, so my brother decided he wanted to go out to the lake, go swimming. That's before the big lake was built."

Interviewer: "Right, right."

"I said, ‘If you go, I'll tell on you. You'll have to let me go.' He called Bubby, and he called Allah B. And we picked them up on Twentieth and then right here on Seventeenth. He got his daddy's watch. Away we went out Twenty-fifth. And at Twenty-fifth and Maple, he was turning there, and he—wasn't very smart—we turned over. (laughter) Here I was barefooted with shorts, and I was screaming. I had Bubby's watch. And they said, Helen! Helen! You're stomping me! They let me out first. Bubby said, ‘Where's my daddy's watch?' I had it just aholding on to it. Anyway, we wrecked my brother's car. We finally got somebody to get us home, and my brother left town, and I had to face the consequences. He joined the circus. It had just been here. But he came home. He saw how easy it was. And these boys were good boys. We were just going to go swimming for a little while and come back. That's why we took the watch."

Stories of getting in trouble when we were little can make good icebreakers, for we all have them in common.

Benny Martinez remembers when his father found out he and his brother had been taking watermelons from a nearby patch.

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Bullies are people who try to harm or intimidate others who they perceive as weaker. It starts in childhood.

Maggie Langham Washington moved to Waco in the fifth grade and remembers how she was an easy target for bullies:

"If you were a minister's child that's new in a school, you saw hard time, a real hard time because kids would do things to you just because they felt like you weren't supposed to do anything back to them because you were a minister's—you were preacher's child, preacher's brat. And after a while that got a little old with me. I decided that I wanted to be a regular person."

Washington recalls a story involving a girl who others had told her was cruel:

"And we were playing pass ball, and I was a tomboy. I could jump, leap high, and get that ball. So she decided, let me guard her, and I heard her. I trembled in my boots. I kept letting her get the ball, and finally I decided this is just not going to work. So when I knew they were throwing the ball to her, I just stepped in front of her and jumped up and got it, and she hit me. When I realized what was happening, the lady that was supervising the game, Mrs. Bevis, one of the teachers, was tapping me on my shoulder saying, ‘Langham, Langham, that's enough.' So that called for a spanking. I knew that. So it was reported to my homeroom teacher; we were both in the same class. And my homeroom teacher carried me into the cloakroom and she says, ‘Every time I hit something, you holler.' (laughter) And I did. And then when it came time to get Henrietta, every time she hit she needed to holler. So nobody in my class ever knew I didn't get a spanking."

Interviewer: "Uh-huh. Yours was all dramatics."

"Yes."

Mary Darden of Waco describes an encounter with a bully in sixth grade in Connecticut that helped shape her passion for social justice:

"And he was beating the crud out of this kid. I mean, the kid was bleeding, and nobody—everybody was standing around, nobody doing anything about it. I went running in, and I pushed the kid out of the way he was beating up and I got in a fight with him. And I started fighting with him, and he—he hurt me. He—I mean, I had a black eye, I'm sure. And, I mean, my face showed it. I mean, you could tell for a week afterwards I'd been in a fight. But I stood there and fought him until the teacher came out and broke us up. And I realized at that point that I was not probably going to draw a line between my personal safety and, you know, that I would take a stand."

Bullying shows no signs of dissipating, especially with today's cyberculture that offers even more methods of terrorizing others. Although bullying is often dismissed as a normal part of growing up, it is harmful, and in some cases the effects last a lifetime.

At Maggie Washington's school, a bully took advantage of a game of pass ball.

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Swimming is a favorite summer activity in Texas, as it provides respite from sweltering temperatures.

Charles Armstrong grew up in the Bell's Hill area of Waco and describes where he and other boys would go to cool off:

"And from Twenty-ninth Street over where the Baylor stadium is now, there was a fence across there, and it wasn't anything but mesquite patch up there where the stadium is. And it had a little—back over there by the railroad track, had a creek come through there, and it was pretty clear water and had swimming hole up there called Little Lake. And we'd go up there and go swimming in Little Lake. And it was—you had to cut across that pasture there by where the stadium is now to get down to it."

The swimming hole was isolated, and the boys were very informal, as Armstrong explains:

"If you had some swimming trunks, fine. If you didn't, fine. You could just go in naked, whatever. (laughter) And when a train come along, we all got up and paraded for them as they come by. They'd [be] sitting there with white tablecloths on them tables and little things like we keeps on the table here, little—look like a little lamp there with a candle in it, you know, sitting on a table and people all dressed up in suits and everything. We'd stand out there naked [and] wave at them. (laughter) But we did that—we did that many, many times."

Alva Stem, former director of Waco Parks and Recreation, remembers the role of swimming in his childhood in Waco:

"My father worked for the police department as a detective, and they were given a pass to the municipal swimming pool, or ‘the beach,' over on North Fourth Street. This was a season pass to go swimming free, and so my brother and I—my brother Jack and I—always went down to the swimming pool once a day to go swimming. Later on in the years, when I became about twelve years old, I was hired as the basket boy, and the basket boy is a young man that takes the baskets that they had there and they would give to the patrons to put their clothes in when they changed into their bathing suits. Then it was my job to put their baskets in the proper numbers in the proper location in the basket room with the swimming pool, and to give the patrons their basket when they came back."

John Lott Jr. of Goliad recalls that escaping the heat was sometimes a family affair:

"Well, we went to the river every summer for about a month: Cousin Henry and Cousin Ella and Virginia Mae, Aunt Helen and Happy and Butch and our family and Aunt Hattie and Atch. And we had tents, and we'd camp down there at the bend, and Cousin Willy even came down and made a swimming suit out of a gunny sack: cut holes in it and put his feet in it and rolled it up and tied it around here. And we had a diving board and a swing. I know we had a—Dad made them a canvas house, partition with canvas, to where women and men could put on their bathing suits."

Swimming helps make the summers in Texas bearable and more enjoyable. That initial splash every time erases all discomfort from the stifling heat.

Boys enjoying a swimming hole. (Courtesy of Library of Congress)

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An annual tradition for many students and teachers is looking for summer employment. During the 1940s, these jobs were becoming easier to find, with a recovering American economy and the war overseas.

Jane Martin, former missionary in East Africa, lists a few of the summer jobs that she held in the 1940s to pay her way through Mars Hill College in North Carolina:

"I worked for the government at the Department of Interior, and I worked for the Department of Navy."

Interviewer: "In Washington, DC, those things are possible."

"You know, but you don't say that I—you were sorting mail and things like that. (both laugh) You weren't—yes. I worked one summer for a community program for underprivileged children. I worked for a department store, but I wasn't working in the store; I was in the warehouse. And to my amazement, they came to me one day, and I thought, Oh my, have I done something wrong? They said, Come with us. We want to talk to you about something. And they put me on the loading dock, as a fourteen-year-old, to receive the trucks as they came in. Their concern was—I had a—I was sitting in a little enclosed room. Their concern was that the language would be pretty bad. But when the truckers arrived bringing in the goods for the department store, they see this young teenager, (both laugh) and they—they minded their language."

Dr. Eugene Jud, former executive director of Caritas in Waco, remembers an encounter he had while teaching in Corpus Christi:

"At the end of that year, we had a big PTA meeting on the end of the year. A man came up, was a big old guy; name was George Bellows. He said he just wanted to meet the teacher that helped his son become a public speaker. I accepted his comments, and that was fine."

Jud describes how that meeting helped him in the summer of 1941, when he was looking for a temporary job:

"Teachers always do a little moonlighting. So I went out to the naval air station. Just everybody would be going out there from all over the country; they—they were applying. So we'd go to the personnel department, and I sat there a long time waiting for my turn. And one of the guys who came in, I said, ‘Who are you waiting for?' And he said, ‘I come—I'm waiting to see George Bellows.' And I said, ‘Who's he?' He said, (laughs) ‘Oh, he's the guy [who] runs this place.' I said, ‘Is he George Bellow Jr.'s dad?' He said, ‘Yeah—that's'—and said, ‘I'm George's good friend.' So I—that gave me an idea. So instead of going and seeing a personnel man or filling out all the forms, well, I went in to see George Bellows. (laughter)

"I introduced—he remembered me. And he asked what I wanted, and I told him I wanted a summer job. And he just said—he buzzed his little buzzer and called for his personnel director. And he says, ‘Put this man on.' (laughter) The personnel director was very smart. He asked me a question or two, and he said, 'I'll tell you what: you report here tomorrow, and you report in my department. You'll be one of the personnel.' So I became one of the members of the personnel staff."

As long as a college education is not free and educators are underpaid, many students and teachers will continue to seek out temporary jobs during the summer months.

Sorting mail in the 1940s.

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Originally Aired 06/2019

In this episode

In one afternoon, 114 people lost their lives and Downtown Waco’s skyline was forever changed. Eric Ames, Assistant Director for Marketing & Communication for the Baylor University Libraries and ITS, walks us through the day the 1953 tornado touched down. We talk about the damage the storm caused, stories of hope in the aftermath, and ways the tornado’s effects are still felt today.

You can find Eric’s book on Waco on Amazon, and most places books are found.

Be sure and follow Waco Walks to learn about other historic walks in town. 

The photo in the album artwork for this episode was used with permission by the Texas Collection at Baylor University. The Texas Collection is Baylor University's oldest special collections library and serves as the University Archive that collects, preserves, and provides access to materials on the history, heritage and culture of Texas. Learn more on their website.

 About the podcast

The Waco History Podcast is co-hosted by Randy Lane and Dr. Stephen Sloan. Randy Lane is the great-grandson of Waco architect Roy E. Lane. He’s also a former American Forces Network Radio DJ and is currently the host of the High Performance Leadership and Charity Champions Podcasts. 

Stephen heads the Oral History Institute at Baylor University. He’s authored several books and created and developed WacoHistory.org, a website and free mobile app for learning more about Waco’s history. 

Together they’re telling the known and unknown stories of Waco’s past.  

Find out more at wacohistorypodcast.com.

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Since its dedication in 1910, Waco's Cameron Park has grown from 125 to more than 400 acres, with land gifts from the Cameron family, and has provided children with countless hours of exercise and enjoyment.

Charlie Turner of Hewitt recalls playing in the park as a young boy in the 1950s and 60s:

"There were some little wading pools we would go play in, and then, of course, I would get in trouble every now and then because after I got in the wading pool, I'd get back in the dirt by the flowers but had a real good time. And, you know, it was just a great place to play because where I lived, there was no grass in the backyard. So going into a park like Cameron Park, it was like a kid's dream because there were all the trees down near the Pecan Bottoms. There were these big swings that I remember and this merry-go-round and the seesaws, and then there was a climbing ladder and then the monkey bars.

"Every now and then—I had an old Tonka truck. It was a moving van Tonka truck that I had a string on, and I'd take it with me once in a while and pull it around on the—on the street part that was paved. If I had a ball, I could throw it as hard as I wanted to and not get in trouble because it was in the neighbors' yard. I could play ball; I could hit the ball as hard as I could. Cameron Park was a paradise to me."

He describes the many adventures the park afforded him:

"There were these trees there, there was vines growing through the trees, and I remember moss down there—whether it was there or not. As a kid, I remember it. And I remember seeing pictures in books about these forests and all, and so when I'd get in Cameron Park I'd go looking. And here were these forest-like-looking areas that I remembered from reading the books. And I could be in England, or I could be in Germany, or I could just be in the Brazilian jungle, or—so Cameron Park took on a new personality each time. I was in the Amazon one time. I was in Nottingham Woods the next time, the Sheriff pursuing me, and then, trying to get away from the piranhas in the little wading pools and all, you know. I had a—well, we'll say I had a fertile imagination."

Frank Curre of Waco shares memories of Cameron Park from the 20s and 30s:

"Proctor Springs. Being able to go down there and get that cold water coming out of that hill and get in that little pool. And we could take watermelons down there in the summer and put them in that cold water and get them good and cool and break them open and eat. They had duck pens with exotic ducks in them for you to visit and a little pool for them to swim in. It was just great to be in the park."

Curre explains that some of his favorite activities involved the Brazos:

"Mama used to tell us, ‘You boys don't get into that water down—' talking about the river. And we'd spend hours in the water and come home in the afternoon, and our eyes are bloodshot. And she'd say, ‘Y'all been in that water?' ‘No, ma'am.' And your eyes are bloodshot. (laughter) But we had ropes tied off the trees hanging over the river, and we'd swing into the river. We'd swim from one side to the other. We just had a ball. We'd play piggy-wiggy or something: touch each other and try to swim away and all that stuff. But we had a great time. We loved fishing. We always kept throw lines in the river."

Today, Cameron Park remains mostly undeveloped and is one of the largest municipal parks in Texas. No matter what new technology and toys come along, nothing will replace exploring and playing in the great outdoors.

A vintage postcard of Cameron Park in Waco, Texas. It's easy to see how the park could transport Charlie Turner to other places and times. (Photo

courtesy of The Texas Collection)

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