Interview of Louise Griner

Interview Team: B.J. Chapman, Beth Helmer

Faculty Facilitator: Mr. Linn

Date of Interview : 2-22-06

Louise Griner was born in Manassas, Georgia, in 1915. After graduating from the University of Georgia in 1938 with a teaching degree, she found that she didn’t enjoy teaching. She returned to the University of Georgia and received a Masters Degree in the Home Extension Service Program in 1941. A Home Extension Service agent in Mt. Vernon, Georgia, she admitted that she liked the Home Extension Service even less than teaching. Returning to UGA in December of 1941 for an annual conference, she heard the news of the bombing of Pearl Harbor while there. Over the Christmas holidays, her boyfriend of five years, an army NCO, proposed marriage. Since her obligation to the Home Extension Service was not up until the summer, she asked him to wait. She also felt that it might make better sense to wait until after he returned from the war to get married. In the meantime, she returned to her Extension Service job, which was supervising and administering a mattress factory. At the same time, she also was responsible for supervising a canning factory in Montgomery County, Georgia.

Finishing her contract with the Extension Service, she now accepted her fiancee’s proposal of marriage and they were married in August 1942. Her husband was a mechanic assigned to Fort Benning. He had managed to procure for them a two bedroom apartment in the new development of Baker Village, at quarters 28A on the NCO side of the complex. The apartment had a small kitchen, a living room, a dinette, and a bathroom in addition to the two bedrooms. Since there was no natural gas at the time, the units were heated with fuel oil furnaces. Periodically, the military would deliver fuel oil from a tanker truck to refill the fuel tanks of the quarters.

Mrs. Griner, holding a master’s degree but now without a job, started doing craftwork at home, a hobby she enjoys to this day. Soon, she was teaching other wives in Baker Village. Since there was a need for knitted material for the soldiers overseas, she began to teach knitting as well. In November 1942, she decided to take a job with Georgia Power. They sent her to Atlanta for training in food preservation. Victory Gardens were being encouraged as a way to help the war effort, and canning food would allow the Victory Gardeners to preserve some of their surplus. She and a coworker rode the train to Atlanta. Mrs. Griner remembers that the train was named “Man of War”, and made two round trips to Atlanta—one in the morning, and one in the afternoon. As she recalls, a round trip ticket cost about $1.50, which was fairly expensive at the time.

Having returned from her training, she began teaching home canning to those citizens in Columbus who wanted to learn. One of the many people she taught was Mrs. Bill Heard, who at the time was teaching school at Wynnton. Living near where the current airport is now located, Mrs. Heard invited Mrs. Griner to come out and teach her and some other wives how to can corn.

In March 1943, Mrs. Griner gave birth to her first child, a baby girl. In those days, having a baby usually meant having to quit your job. However, in October 1945, she heard a knock at the door. The principal of the new Baker High School adjacent to the housing development had heard that Mrs. Griner had experience with canning. Baker High, which had opened in 1943, had a canning facility, and the teacher was leaving. When Mrs. Griner asked about what to do with her baby, the principal told her to find a baby sitter, because he needed her to finish out the academic year. She did finish out the year, and when the canning facility was closed in 1947, she was still there. She would stay at Baker High School for thirty years, in the process becoming an icon to generations of Baker High School students.

As a recent article on Mrs Griner in the Ledger-Enquirer ( 9-7-2005) points out, most canning was done in the summer as different vegetables and fruits were harvested. She would send out fliers in the spring to remind gardeners to bring in their food. She would teach them how to can at the school, and they would take their canned food home with them. Sugar rationing was an especial problem for people who canned fruit. Canning fruit without sugar, or even without enough sugar, did not properly preserve the fruit and gave the fruit a bad taste.

Of rationing, Mrs. Griner remembers that ration booklets for different items were issued at three month intervals. She recalled that the booklets were issued at central locations throughout the town—many times at voting precincts, which in her case was the nearby Baker High School. People were granted gas rationing coupons according to need, with a category A having the least priority, and category D having the highest priority. A sticker affixed to the bumper of your car informed gas stations and others of your rationing category. Mrs. Griner said that cars going onto the Fort Benning reservation had to have passengers. Hitchhiking and carpooling was not only common, it was a necessity. For those without automobiles or short on gasoline coupons, the public bus system was very good, for about ten cents a ride.

As a young married woman at the time, Mrs. Griner seldom went to Phenix City, which she called “the crime center of the world”. Proper young women did not go there alone. On an NCO’s pay, there was not a good deal of dining out in Columbus during the war. Nevertheless, Mrs. Griner remembers the pleasures of buying chilidogs, a specialty at Firm Roberts, and eating out at Pat Patterson’s Restaurant. She especially liked the big band sound of Glenn Miller and his orchestra, playing “In the Mood”. Because her husband was a soldier, they went to the post movie theater at Fort Benning to see most of their movies. Many times, couples in Baker Village would have cookouts and enjoy each other’s company.

War Bond drives at Baker High School involved students buying stamps to fill up a stamp savings bond booklet. For $18.75, a student could exchange it for a $25 bond. There were also several scrap metal companies in Columbus at the time. People would take their scrap metal to the scrap yard, or if the item was too big, they could call the company and the company would provide pick up service. However, there was not a regular scrap metal pickup schedule.

Mrs. Griner’s husband never was deployed overseas. Mrs. Griner remembers with a smile that the post “needed somebody to keep all their vehicles running”. After the war, the Griner’s bought a house in Benning Hills. She now lives with her son’s family at 305 Crestfield Drive.