North American Avaition

During the war, my mother went to work for NAA as an unskilled, uneducated, and inexperienced employee. Her first assignment was to riveter's school at nights somewhere in downtown Dallas. She would sometimes bring home an aluminum panel about a foot square with several rows of rivets that she had installed and she would say that the panel was the equivalent of a test paper. The rivets were
marked in red ink with notes indicating if they were acceptable or not. After a few weeks, she was sent to the main plant in Grand Prairie and became a regular employee.

She must not have been too good a riveter because her long-time job
was as an inspector in the tubing department. She used to brag
about how many a P-51 pilot, using a tube that she had inspected, was able to relieve himself on his 12-hour flight to Germany and back.

While employed at NAA, she was reunited with a brother she had not seen since she was little girl. He was security guard at the plant.

The story of their reunion is told on page 8 in the upper right-hand corner of the paper.

Jim Stinson