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McLeod, Glad (audio interview #3 of 3)
INTERVIEW DESCRIPTION - This is final of three rather lengthy interviews with Glad McLeod, conducted in the living room of the apartment that she shares with her husband. Suffering from severe emphysema, she receives a steady supply of oxygen from a tank located in a back room. As before, we were interrupted during the interview by the delivery of the oxygen tanks. As noted previously, McLeod's emphysema and constant intake of oxygen resulted in abrupt, interrupted phrases. As in the second interview, there seemed to be some impaired memory function resulting from her physical condition, and this often resulted in a confusing chronology. Despite these problems, McLeod remained a willing and eager narrator and her openness contributed to a relaxed interview process. 3/31/1980
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- SUBJECT BIO - Glad McLeod was a student at UCLA, preparing for a career in teaching, before she went to work at Lockheed in 1942. The youngest of three children, she was born and raised in Hollidaysburg, Pennsylvania until the family moved to Los Angeles in 1936. After graduating from Hollywood High School in 1937, she worked first as a domestic, and then as a clerical worker after her son was born in 1940. She married his father in 1942 and remained married to him for seven years. Her second marriage was also short-lived (five years), but at the time of interview, she was still married to her third husband. Although McLeod applied for a job shortly after Pearl Harbor, the "manpower" problem was not yet severe enough for the aircraft companies to be hiring women with no previous experience. Instead, she was referred to a training program. Excelling in this program, she entered Lockheed as a riveter and quickly moved up to becoming a training instructor, and eventually an inspector. In 1943, she was sent to an Engineering Management Training Program and went to work in the Planning Department. Despite her obvious interest and competence, she had no intention of changing her career plans, and returned to UCLA in 1946. After receiving her BA and Teaching Credential in 1948, she taught and served as a counselor for the next twenty-seven years, occasionally using her the skills she gained during the war to teach shop. McLeod was forced to retire in 1975 as a result of health problem. At the time of the interview, she required a steady flow of oxygen and her life and activities were clearly constrained by her condition. TOPICS - social life; child care; Women's Counselors; minorities and migrant workers; workplace injuries; plant dispensary; managing household responsibilities; living arrangements; assignment in planning modification; antichild care; elementary and junior high school teaching jobs; supervising after-school playground activities; social life; meeting second husband; marital relationship; gender roles and domesticity; religion; livingteaching drafting class at Burbank Junior High School; working as a school counselor; alcoholism; third husband; impact of defense work on her career and personal life; planning skills; job discrimination; gender dcounseling credential; district opposition to group counseling techniques; her opposition to policing student body and yard duty; racial and ethnic background of student body; racism of administrators; medical pro
- *** File: rrrgmcleod10.mp3 Audio Segments and Topics: (0:11-1:17)... She did not participate in Lockheed Employees Recreational Club (LERC) activities because her life revolved around work and taking care of her son. (1:17-4:44)... Note: Initially there is background noise that resembles a tape being fast forwarded. The problem is fixed after the recorder is turned off and back on. McLeod reviews the child care arrangements for her son, nothing that she the referrals she got from the Women's Counselor after taking her son out of Mrs. Jeanette's Boarding School were not satisfactory. Except for communicating with the day care teacher when she dropped her son off or picked him up, there was no parent-teacher collaboration in her son's care. Daycare centers were relatively new then and there were always issues over funding. Although she could not recall the cost , it was extremely low compared to the boarding school. (4:44-5:04)... When she began working at Lockheed in 1942, there were no company services in the plant and she does not recall every using any services as the years progressed. (5:04-6:30)... In 1942, when McLeod started working at Lockheed, there were very few, if any, minorities. When she began working as an instructor, Blacks had just started coming into the plant and she recalls training a few on sheet metal and riveting skills. She does not recall any migrant workers. She recounts an incident when her mother came home one day announcing that McLeod would be proud of her progress because she did not get up from the table when a Black woman sat next to her during lunch. (6:30-7:25)... McLeod went to the plant dispensary once or twice for very minor work-related injuries. For the most part, she does not believe too many people were injured on the job. Employees could seek treatment at the dispensary for any medical reason. (7:25-9:25)... McLeod recounts her daily routing during the war. When her son was in boarding school, she picked him up on Saturdays after work and returned him to the boarding school before his bedtime on Sunday evenings. During this period, she and her husband moved to three different locations. They were renting a studio apartment when he went into the service. She made dinner in the evenings when they got home from work. Her husband did not help her with the cooking, shopping, or laundry responsibilities while they were married. (9:25-11:25)... When she married, she and her husband had no immediate or future plans to have children. She was busy working and raising an infant and did not want to have any children with her husband because of their marital problems. She planned on returning to college after the war. If she had not become pregnant during her junior year in college, she would have finished college and started a teaching career before the war broke out and probably would not have pursued any opportunities at Lockheed. (11:25-13:14)... McLeod began working in planning in 1944 - a position she held longer than any others at Lockheed. Her husband was drafted sometime during that year. She purchased a home in Burbank after he left when her son was four years old. (13:14-16:12)... McLeod's first assignment after finishing the engineering and management training program, was designing modifications to the air scoop of either PV2s or B-17s. She did that work for a few months, then seized the opportunity to move into preliminary planning. In that job, she worked on designing bombay doors, the flight station, and all the tools for production of these new fighter planes. She did not expect to keep her position after the war, aware that it was temporary and there was not going to be an opportunity for women to stay. She enjoyed the work because it was challenging and exciting. She probably would have stayed in planning had she not been laid off after the war. However, she had no plans to pursue an engineering or planning degree when she returned to college. (16:12-17:16)... When layoffs began in 1945, she waited in anticipation to be laid off. Whenever she was passed over, she hoped she would keep her job. She was not looking forward to the financial struggle ahead of her because she planned on returning to college and knew that it was going to be hard to manage tuition without a steady income. (17:16-19:10)... McLeod managed to save quite a bit of money during the war and made mortgage and insurance payments a year in advance so that she would not have to worry about these expenses after she was laid off. Even though she received a military allotment, she sent it to her husband to compensate for the money that was deducted from his paychecks when he worked at Hughes Tool Plant while stationed Texas. In other words, she did not get any financial support from him after he went into the service. After she was laid off, she managed to pay her college tuition and food and gas expenses with the rent money she received from her mother and her cousin Dottie (to whom she refers as her sister). (19:10-23:34)... McLeod received written notice that she was going to be laid off in the spring of 1947. She was one of the first to be laid off in her department because she had less seniority than most of the men and women in planning. Most of the twenty or so women in planning held office jobs prior to transferring into that division. After she was laid off, she thought, "My God! What am I going to do now?" She planned on returning to college, but was not sure she could handle the transition. She enrolled in the six-week summer session at UCLA, and when she finished that session, she was called back to Lockheed for eight-weeks to tie up loose ends. She did not apply for unemployment after she was laid off. (23:34-24:51)... By the time she was laid off from Lockheed, McLeod's husband had returned from the service. About six months later, they ended their marriage. She notes that it was a strange marraige from the beginning: "It wasn't exactly your natural, little nuclear family." (24:51-26:46)... McLeod decided to slowly transition back into college and first attended a summer session at UCLA. When she returned to school, she learned that her major was phased out and she would be required to take three additional three courses in order to graduate. She attended UCLA for a year and two summer sessions, graduating in the fall of 1948, and began teaching immediately. Except for the brief period she worked at Lockheed during the summer of 1947, she never worked while going to college, using the rent money from her mother and cousin to pay her tuition and support her son. (26:46-29:09)... McLeod's first teaching assignment was at Edison High School. She taught there for a year and a half, but disliked the principle because of his administrative and school policies fostering competition and peer pressure among the students. McLeod requested a transfer when the assistant principal, whose teaching philosophies were in line with hers, went to work at Lincoln Elementary School. (29:09-30:32)... McLeod's mother had seniority in the paint shop and stayed at Lockheed. She left when she was sixty-four after suffering a stroke. As the interview ends, McLeod is discussing her daily routine after she began teaching. . End of tape. *** File: rrrgmcleod11.mp3 (0:00-3:25)... Note: There is some static in the beginning of this segment. McLeod taught at the same schools where her son attended day care. At one point, she was his teacher until he was transferred into a new classroom. Before she went to work at Lincoln Elementary School, she supervised after-school playground activities for two hours each day during the week and on Saturdays mornings to earn extra money. She continued to work in this capacity after she transferred to the school. (3:25-4:16)... McLeod's social life did not change after she and her husband separated. She did not make many friends while teaching elementary school, and her life continued to revolve around her family. (4:16-12:45)... Note: There is static in this segment. McLeod remarried in 1951. She met her husband (Paris Williams) when her sister hired him to clean her trailer. Their courtship was ideal, but his behavior changed after they married. They enjoyed boating and were active in the Baptist Church. He and his church brethren convinced her that the problems in their marriage stemmed from her not knowing her place and that she needed to be a housewife. Even after she went on sabbatical and quit teaching, he was not happy. After they reconciled, she became a registered tutor with the district and tutored students in her home to cover their groceries expenses. He left her for the second and final time in May 1956. McLeod also discusses her living arrangements during this five-year period. (12:45-17:36)... After divorcing her second husband, McLeod began looking for a teaching position. Unsuccessful in finding a teaching job, she re-applied at Lockheed and was hired to manage tool design files. There was no expectation that she would return to planning because so many things had changed during her ten-year absence. She worked in tool design from September 1956 until January 1957, and then began to do substitute teaching for elementary schools. She was hired at Sun Valley Elementary School in the Fall of 1957. When the school year ended, she returned to the Burbank School District and was hired at a junior high school. She had taken several classes at UCLA since she graduated and her teaching credential permitted her to teach up to the ninth grade. (17:36-18:39)... Following her divorce, McLeod's activities with the Baptist Church slowly declined. She taught bible study for one summer, after which she distanced herself from the church and the people she met there. She no longer felt comfortable in this atmosphere because it was very couple-oriented. (18:39-23:03)... McLeod was employed at Burbank Junior High School for twelve years. She taught an interdisciplinary course entitled "social living" for one semester before moving into a permanent position as a math teacher. When she became grade-level chairman, one of her school periods was dedicated to counseling failing students. She became increasingly interested in counseling and suggested that she begin counseling seventh grade students up to the ninth-grade. She eventually went back to school and received a "People Personnel Services Credential." (23:03-26:24)... Raising a teenage son was a difficult task. McLeod's son was rebellious and was partly raised by two problematic stepfathers. He disliked school and frequently cut class. He left high school and enlisted in the Marines, but eventually got a GED. She talks about her living arrangements during her son's teenage years. Eventually, she purchased her fourth home. (26:24-28:21)... At Luther Burbank Junior High School, McLedo's main responsibility was counseling students. However, she taught one or two classes in math and drafting until counseling became a full-time position in 1965. End of tape. *** File: rrrgmcleod12.mp3 (0:00-4:03)... The boys were a little amused and excited about having a woman drafting teacher, and on back-to-school night, their parents were curious about a woman teaching drafting and wanted to meet her. The male shop teachers were happy to have her teaching drafting and she never encountered any negative reactions from them. In her counseling, McLeod encouraged girls take drafting as an elective, informing them what types of jobs they could do with these skills. Girls were required to take home economics and boys were required to take shop or drafting. She also encouraged boys to take home economics to learn cooking skills. (4:03-5:15)... In addition to counseling students about their class schedules and course curriculum, McLeod she talked to them about their aspirations and goals. She felt this was an especially important seed to plant in junior high-school students because they needed to start thinking about what types of courses they would pursue in high school and/or college. She also counseled students who came to her with personal problems. (5:15-10:32)... McLeod's drinking habits got progressively worse, and by the late 1950s she was drinking on a nightly basis at home alone. Even though she had shakes in the morning, she never drank before or during work hours. When a former co-worker came back to work to make amends, he sensed that she had a drinking problem. They began dating and he suggested that she attend an AA meeting. She decided to kick the habit in November 1961 when her personal problems began interfering with her ability to function at work. Her colleagues never knew she was an alcoholic until she told them after she got her problem under control. She met her third husband (Jack) in February 1962 at an AA meeting. From that point on, AA has been the focus of her life and most of her friends are people she met in AA. (10:32-13:08)... After she remarried, her career remained focused on school counseling and teaching math. She served on a curriculum committee in which she wrote lessons for new math problems. The counseling she provided was a combination of career and personal counseling. Students were summoned to counseling sessions once each semester. She also implemented a system that made it easier for students to schedule to see her outside of their regularly scheduled appointment. (13:08-14:32)... McLeod's job at Lockheed helped her career as a teacher and a counselor by expanding her interests and helping her understand the different social and educational strata. Her experiences kept her from developing the "ivory tower" syndrome that so many teachers possess. Rather, she understood the issues facing working families. (14:32-17:04)... When McLeod moved into planning, she was classified as a "top 'B' planner" with a wage cap of $1.61 per hour. Even though she "nagged" her supervisors about being promoted to an "A" planner, she was never promoted because "it was not practical to make a woman an 'A.'" This was even more frustrating after the planning division completed a survey that showed she was the only planner with the fewest errors in her work orders. She was not enthusiastic about a career in planning at Lockheed if it meant she would be frozen as a "B" classified planner. (17:04-22:31)... The skills McLeod acquired at Lockheed had an effect on both her personal and professional life, e.g. doing home and car repairs. On a social level, working in the plant illuminated how a person's job and income level can create distinct social and economic classes among the work force. Although she considered herself a tomboy prior to going to work at Lockheed, she had never done anything mechanical. (22:31-26:29)... McLeod recounts how she applied her mechanical and planning skills in home improvement and decorating projects. She also used her blueprint and drafting skills to design two boats that her second husband built in the 1950s. (26:29-29:24)... McLeod began dating her third husband in February 1962. In the fall, they rented an apartment and moved in together. She recounts his work history. End of tape. *** File: rrrgmcleod13.mp3 (0:00-2:30)... Note: There is an interruption in this segment. In the early 1960s, McLeod obtained a People Personnel [services] Credential (sic) and continued to counsel students at Luther Burbank Junior HS. After she returned from a sabbatical and European vacation with her husband, in the spring of 1966, she decided to pursue a masters in psychology at UCLA. However, when she learned that her degree would take longer than anticipated, she resumed her counseling position. By this time, the school had acquired federal funding for two, full-time counselors and McLeod stepped into one of these and did not have to teach classes any longer. (2:30-7:33)... When McLeod began counseling at Luther Burbank Junior HS on a full-time basis, the approach was not in line with the counseling methods McLeod was taught at UCLA. Her role was to police students and use tactics meant to scare students so that they would improve their grades and/or behavior. She attempted to incorporate the ideas she had learned at UCLA, but encountered resistance and a district and local level. The Counseling Center was redesigned during this period, but McLeod's design to incorporate a room for group counseling was rejected. The district was opposed to group counseling; administrators believed it was a "communist plot and an attempt to brainwash the students." (7:33-13:29)... Note: There is an interruption in this segment when McLeod speaks to someone in her home. In the fall of 1968, McLeod left the junior high school for a counseling position at Burbank High School. She again had difficulty with administrators when her counseling methods clashed with their expectations. Initially, she evaded the responsibility when asked to do yard duty and patrol hallways for truant students. When the principal continued to pressure counselors to fulfill this role, they refused. McLeod and the other counselors designed a counseling program that she presented to the administration. However, when their program encountered opposition, none of the counselors backed her up. During these meetings, she was reprimanded for telling an administrator that yard duty and patrolling cafeterias was not counseling. She believed that counselors were supposed to be change agents who provided a supportive and trusting environment or the student body. (13:29-15:00)... Occasionally, McLeod was confronted by parents who wanted to know the contents of their child's counseling sessions, but she refused to compromise her student's confidentiality. On one occasion, a student's physically abusive parents complained to the principal because McLeod refused to give them information about her meetings with their daughter. (15:00-17:20)... Over the course of her career at Burbank High School, more "Hispanics" enrolled; but there was only one African-American student and one South Asian student. She recalls the secretary's reaction when she learned the light-skinned Black boy's background and saw him kiss a White girl on school grounds. McLeod does not believe the principal realized he was being bigoted when he addressed "Hispanic" students as "you people." (17:20-19:34)... During her first year at Burbank High School, McLeod taught one period of math before becoming a full-time counselor. After winning a victory against yard duty, the principal provided counselors with a list of truant students and asked them to call parents and notify them that their children were not attending class. McLeod was outraged by this obvious attempt to get her to police the student body. Like yard duty, this tactic would compromise the trust she had established with students. (19:34-21:45)... McLeod went on sabbatical in 1973. In the interim before she returned to Burbank High School in the fall of 1974, she and her third husband separated and divorced. They remarried in September 1974 and went to Mexico for a second honeymoon. They both contracted influenza and she developed pneumonia. She went on sick leave and never returned to work. She was on disability until she retired at sixty. She discusses the medical care she received during this period, noting that her emphysema was undetected in 1974. (21:45-24:29)... Since retiring, McLeod's level of activity decreased because of health problems. She spends most of her time reading at home. Prior to going on sick leave, she earned a masters degree in counseling and was planning to obtain her Marriage and Family Counseling license and pursue opportunities in that field. However, she began experiencing breathlessness and fatigue in the early 1960s, which attributed to anxiety and stress, not a medical condition. Her health problems have greatly affected her memory. (24:29-27:15)... Commenting on how her work at Lockheed impacted her life, McLeod states: "it was such a broadening experience and I wouldn't have given it up voluntarily for anything. I learned a lot more about people." She had no friends prior to going to work at the plant and considered herself an introvert. Once she began working at Lockheed, she made more friends and learned how to relate to all kinds of people. This was useful in her counseling careers because people felt comfortable opening up to her. In AA, she sponsored two homosexuals and also pursued her interest in gay rights and volunteered as a counselor at the Gay Community Services Center for a year. She credits her experiences at Lockheed for helping her develop tolerance and empathy for people with different lifestyles. (27:15-29:10)... Even though McLeod had a difficult time raising her son and wondered if he would ever find his way in life, he turned out to be successful. He is a very loving son and husband; shares the household responsibilities with his wife; and generally enjoys the company of women on an intellectual and social level. End of tape.
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