Willow Glen Resident

News

Alma Taylor used song to boost morale

By Alicia Upano

Alma Carrington Taylor, her sister and roommate cried when they heard that the Japanese bombed Pearl Harbor. It was a sunny day in their San Jose apartment and the college students, who had been studying, knew life was about to change.

Their boyfriends, who would later become their husbands, were already in the military. These men would head into battle while the women would begin an adventure of their own as America entered World War II.

In 1942, the government called on women to hold down the homefront. Nearly 7 million responded--2 million worked in the industrial field symbolized by cultural icon Rosie the Riveter, and 400,000 joined the military. The rest, like Taylor, lent their skills to the American workforce. These women made history, offering their talents and helping to pave the road toward workplace equality.

"It changed everything for women," says 84-year-old Taylor of Willow Glen. "They could have jobs. They didn't have to stay at home."

In the summer of 1942, Taylor's future husband, Bob, was stationed at Camp Roberts north of Paso Robles. Taylor had just finished her third year at San José State and began working in the offices of Joshua Hendy Iron Works in Sunnyvale, which will celebrate its 100th anniversary Aug. 10-12.

The 90-acre plant had once employed only a few hundred workers, but during World War II that number jumped to 8,000, Iron Man Museum tour coordinator Eric Thomas says. The plant made turbine engines for the Liberty ships built in Richmond. The Hendy Corp. sold the plant to Westinghouse in 1947. Northrop Grumman Marine Systems purchased it in 1996.

When it was owned by Hendy, the plant made engines for war ships, hydraulic monitors used in the building of the Panama Canal and valves for the Hoover Dam. The plant was designated a National Historic Mechanical Engineering Landmark in 1978. Dave Baer started the Iron Man Museum in 1984, filled with artifacts from the plant's 100-year history.

Taylor and her family will walk through the museum Aug. 12, as guests of the anniversary celebration. There, she will find portraits of her past--photographs of her as a young woman working at Hendy's. In one, she is standing on a turbine engine. In another, she poses with the Hendy's quartet.

Sitting in her Willow Glen home, Taylor recalls that time 64 years ago. After a week on the job, she asked for a week off to get married. Bob Taylor had sent her a telegram asking to marry him the following week.

"I was so naïve that I didn't know that you don't do things like that," Taylor says.

The Taylor wedding was a "rush-rush thing" in Carson City, Nev. Taylor returned to her work at Hendy's, and Bob to Camp Roberts.

In addition to their new working lifestyle, women lived with the fear of getting news that a son, husband or father had been killed. They also had to deal with rationing and the scarcity of meat, sugar and gas. But Taylor had an opportunity to help boost morale.

Shortly after she started working at Hendy's, the plant surveyed its workers for their talents. Taylor had taken years of piano and voice lessons and studied music at San José State.

Soon, she was singing in the Hendy Band that performed regularly for the homefront workers. Taylor still remembers the songs she sang, including "Ah Sweet Mystery of Life," "My Hero," and "Tangerine." She became known as the "Songbird of Hendy." She was in the Hendy Chorus and sang with the San Francisco Opera Chorus for one year.

The former farm girl from the Los Altos Hills performed for dignitaries in the Saratoga hideaway of Hendy's president, Charles Moore, along with a pianist and dancer one evening.

Moore playfully bet $5 to any girl who would drink the yellow-spring water near his home. Taylor volunteered, having grown up with the mineral water, and won the $5.

She also sang for then Sen. Harry Truman at Sainte Claire Hotel party. Truman was in town touring Hendy's.

"I had no idea he would be a president of the United States later," she says. "He was just another old man as far as I was concerned."

Her husband was in combat in the Pacific for 18 months toward the end of the war, as Taylor worked at home.

In 1945, when the war ended, the women were fired from their industrial jobs as soldiers returned home. Taylor, who did clerical work at the plant, continued working until she and her husband decided to raise a family. Her first son, Robert A. Jr., was born in 1947, and she had a second son, John R., two years later. She was a stay-at- home mom, but Taylor still yearned to sing.

Her husband gave her money for a diaper service, but she used it for voice lessons, studying under Dora Shepherd and Ivan Rasmussen.

In the early 1960s, Taylor performed leading roles with the West Bay Opera, including La Boheme, Madama Butterfly and Don Giovanni. Taylor also performed a one-woman show at clubs in the area.

She held many musical positions in churches, including soloist roles at Westminster Presbyterian and First Presbyterian churches. She was a choir director for the Calvin Presbyterian Church, the first choir director for Temple Emanu-El during the High Holy Days and music director for First Presbyterian Church in Santa Clara. She also sang at the Christian Science churches in San Jose.

During this time, Taylor performed and taught voice lessons. In 1970, her husband had a heart attack and encouraged Taylor to find work that would support her if he died. Together, they studied for the real estate exam and received licenses. Taylor began her career in real estate at 50, retiring at 73. Her husband died in 2004.

In her retirement years, Taylor keeps busy. She is involved with the San Jose Opera Guild, San Jose Woman's Club, Preservation Action Council of San Jose, the Society of California Pioneers, Opera Bridge groups and Preludes and Encores League. In 2001, she established a scholarship for a San José State University vocal student through the San Jose Woman's Club.

Through these affiliations, Taylor has been invited to speak about the Rosie the Riveter era to various groups, such as the Pacific Legal Foundation. In 2000, she attended the dedication of the Rosie the Riveter Memorial in Richmond. Taylor still maintains the "get-it-done dignity" of the Rosie generation.

"I've always gone my own way," she says.

For more information on the Iron Man Museum, 401 E. Hendy Ave., Sunnyvale, call 408.735.2020. Guided individual and group tours are open to the public by appointment.