In this Senior Voices web extra, we hear from Toula Stamm, born in 1932 and raised in Dayton’s close-knit Greek immigrant community. She remembers growing up on Proctor Street, where Sinclair Community College now stands, and hearing a radio broadcast that she will never forget. Toula shared her story with Dayton Metro Library volunteer interviewer, Cynthia Wallace-King.
Transcript:
Toula Stamm: So we had to learn how to speak Greek, and we did not like going to Greek school. But when we became adults, we were so glad that we learned how to speak the language fluently, some of them not so fluently.
Cynthia Wallace-King: Do you still speak it?
Toula Stamm: I do. I do still speak it. I do speak it. And Proctor Street was…during…we moved there just before World War II started. And I can remember December 7th, 1941.
We were celebrating a Greek gentleman’s name day. We celebrate name days and birthdays. The name day, you’re usually named after a saint, and so they lived at 300 Grand Avenue in Dayton View, near the Masonic Temple, and we were there on a Sunday evening, the children were in the kitchen listening to Jack Benny, and the adults were in the living room and dining room eating some hors d’oeuvres that the host family provided and the gentleman’s name was Nick Vartolitas whom were honoring, it was his name day, and we heard on the radio, Jack Benny’s show was interrupted with a news bulleting that Pearl Harbor, the Japanese had just bombed Pearl Harbor.
Now, I was only nine years old, that was 1941, December 7th, and the only thing I knew about Pearl Harbor, I mean I didn’t know anything about Pearl Harbor, I knew about a pearl necklace or a pearl bracelet, I had no idea what Pearl Harbor was. And right away we told the adults, and then somebody drove us home, and as we drove down Main Street from the North Main Street Bridge, we went past Third and Main, across Third Street from the Court House was the Mayor’s Jewelry Store and already the newspaper boys were out selling extras, Extra! Extra! Japanese bomb Pearl Harbor.
So we did get home, and as a child, as a nine year old girl, I was so frightened. The next day I did not go to school, I stayed home and sat next to the radio with my father to listen to President Roosevelt say “This day will live in infamy,” and I’m envisioning in my nine year old mind, bombs falling on Proctor Street, and all of that that happens during a war.
This interview was edited by Community Voices producer and Senior Voices project coordinator Jocelyn Robinson. Senior Voices is a collaboration between the Dayton Metro Library, Rebuilding Together Dayton, and WYSO. This series is made possible through the generous support of the Del Mar Healthcare Fund of the Dayton Foundation.
