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Al and June Ownby
Born July 22, 1923, Al Ownby was the oldest of J.W. and
Minnie Ownby's three children, with Robert Donald and
Mary Frances following. Like many families in the years
before antibiotics, however, there had been others. Ivan
Lee, born a little over a year before Al, died as a baby
while twins Dorothy and Doris, born after Robert, died
after birth.
"Back then there was no way to treat for pneumonia,"
says Al, recalling "grown people" were sent to bed with
a shot of whiskey and hot water to break up the
infection. For those who disliked the taste of whiskey,
a little sugar sweetened the brew.
When he was six years old, the family moved from their
rural home between Hollow Rock and Buena Vista to the
farm his father had bought a mile outside of Mixie
toward Ephesus Church. There the family raised basic
crops like corn, cotton, potatoes, hay, and watermelon.
"We always had a big garden," Al says, his smile turning
to a frown as he recalls the drought of 1930 that added
insult to the injury of the Great Depression.
"We had a good wet spring, then the fourth of July came
a gully washer and not another drop. Cotton was up and
corn was three feet high; it dried up in the field. It
was a tremendous drought," he says, describing cracks in
the earth six to 12 inches wide and 18 feet deep as
measured by his father with a weight on the end of
fishing line. The family's cow and two horses starved to
death during the onslaught, when, Al recalls, "Only
those with low land made anything, but we didn't have
any bottom land at all."
When the economy hit rock bottom in 1932, the family
moved to Hebron Church Road halfway between Rosser and
Hollow Rock. Al went to live with his uncle and aunt,
Arthur Pace and Edna Mae Baker.
Roosevelt's WPA (Works Progress Administration) made a
great impact in the area by building outhouses for rural
schools.
"When I started school, even up to the sixth and seventh
grade, there were no toilet facilities at rural schools
- the boys went on one side of the road and the girls on
the other," he tells.
Another New Deal era program offered a ray of hope for
young men and their families while giving a country on
the road to war a head start on training. The CCC
(Civilian Conservation Corps) mobilized young men in a
military environment to work for conservation of land
and trees.
Boys were paid $8.00 of the $30.00 per month stipend as
members of the CCC, with the balance sent to their
families each month. For Al, it was a luxury compared to
working in the sorghum fields all day for a gallon of
molasses that brought 40cents in the grocery store, or
working off-season in Benton County loading clay and
sand for 15 cents an hour.
Al joined the "Three Cs" at 17, on July 15, 1941. He
studied at night about how to wire houses for
electricity, as well as auto mechanics and welding.
During the day, he was part of a survey crew.
"We surveyed every dadgum gully in Benton County," he
says. The crew made topography maps of "gullies,
elevations and every crook and turn." These were sent to
an engineering firm in Nashville, who responded with
instructions regarding where to build dams to limit soil
erosion.
Another division of the Three Cs built dams in
conjunction with the building of the TVA dam at
Gilbertsville, according to Al, whose crew was also
involved in planting pines and black locust trees to
combat soil erosion.
"They didn't want the area filled up with mud and silt
before they got started," he explains.
The December 7, 1941 Japanese raid on Pearl Harbor
marked the end of the CCC. "They started processing us
out, they knew we would be drafted," he says.
As the nation shifted into a wartime economy, Al
recalls, "sugar, coffee, everything was rationed."
People working at the Milan Arsenal carpooled to save
gas. A shortage of automobile tires meant many people
packed their tires with sawdust when they would no
longer hold air. What couldn't be rationed, such as
rent, was regulated with price controls.
Al characterized World War II as a war fought on two
fronts. "People at home were saving." he explains,
"Waste grease was used in making explosives - everybody
was saving everything."
He saw his grandmother stretch the month's ration of
coffee by mixing it with sweet potatoes chopped fine and
browned in the oven on a cookie sheet until they were
almost burnt. Children picked up glass bottles and tin
cans that were recycled.
"You can't leave out the people at home," he reiterates.
In November 1942, Al was among a dozen former CCC youths
who went to Huntingdon to enlist in the Navy. The
recruiter took their applications, but warned, "Fellas,
the Army's going to draft you the first of the year
before we can ever get the paperwork processed."
"He was right, they did," declares Al, who says 385
Tennesseans were ordered to report the first week of
January 1943.
In basic training at St. Petersburg, Florida, the men
lived in tents in a vicinity with no mess hall. Potatoes
and beans were cooked in 20-gallon galvanized garbage
cans set on two rows of bricks with a fire built
underneath and a tarpaulin stretched overhead.
Al received communications training at the Camp Crowder,
Missouri Signal Corps School, located in the boot hill
of the Ozarks near Joplin, where he studied Teletype,
telephone and telegraph operations.
Stationed at Davis-Monthan AAFB near Tucson, Arizona
with the 2nd Army Air Force, Al worked with the new B24
Liberator bombers that, he tells, were quite a bit
larger than the B17s and faster, with a bigger bomb
load.
Former Congressman and 1972 Democratic presidential
candidate George McGovern was among the pilots of the
B24s, which were later cited as difficult to handle. Al
says 50 percent of the planes were lost over Germany as
a result.
His next assignment was with the new bomb group formed
at Smoky Hill Army Airfield (now Schilling Air Force
Base) near Salina, Kansas. He arrived at the airfield on
December 12, 1943, where he worked with the B29
Superfortresses.
"When we arrived they wouldn't let us see the airplanes
until we cleared security and had our badges made," he
says. At the top of an enclosed brick wall some 25-30
ft. high, he could see the tops of the rudders of three
airplanes. By the first of the year, however, the planes
began rolling in, hot off the production line.
That's when, Al says, he learned the value of women's
roles in the war, with female pilots ferrying in new
airplanes and female mechanics "climbing around a B29
with 50-pound wrenches in their pockets."
On February 28, 1944, Al was among a group scheduled to
accompany the planes to Bombay, India. He was standing
in the freezing Kansas rain waiting for a “troop train”
when a messenger arrived with orders for him to report
to his commanding officer.
"You're not going to Bombay," the officer advised Ownby,
who protested, "What do you mean? I've been with this
group from day one!"
"We need you to train the cryptographer for the group
going to Saipan," he was told.
 Al
explains no voice communication was used on the planes;
instead, messages based upon a five-letter code group
were translated, then responded to in like manner by
Morse code.
Al never started the training to which he was assigned,
however, instead winding up in a Salina, Kansas hospital
with his ankles and feet so swollen he couldn't walk. He
was diagnosed with rheumatic fever, an ailment that kept
him confined until the 23rd of December when he returned
to Tucson, where it was felt the dry climate would
benefit his health.
There he serviced the radio equipment of B29s returning
from wartime service. Some 750 of them were stored in
the desert at Davis-Monthan, Al says, and in three big
fields in Texas they were stored wing to wing.
Eventually, he says, most of them were scrapped though
some were remade into tankers.
The most famous B29 bomber, the Enola Gay, from which
was discharged the first atomic bomb over Hiroshima, is
now displayed at the Smithsonian National Air and Space
Museum in Washington.
With the war's end, Al was discharged on February 4,
1946 and skirted an offer of employment with the
Mountain States Telephone Company in Tucson at $100 per
week.
"I said, 'No, I'm going home.' I didn't think I'd have
any trouble getting a job; I knew all there was to know
about telephones."
He discovered Jackson was not hiring, however, and he
eventually accepted a job from Cecil Jackson, who ran
Riley's Home Furniture Co., at $20 per week.
When he had left home in 1943 rural homes were still lit
in the evenings by coal oil (kerosene) lamps. It was
1946 before electricity was finally available to Al's
old homeplace. He laughs recalling the single bulbs
hanging by their cords in the center of each room.
He became a frequent customer of a little restaurant
near home on Hebron Church Road where Betty June Bogle
was a waitress. The two married on October 10, 1946, and
moved to McKenzie.
They moved to Indiana in 1948 after Al learned there
were jobs to be had there. In fact, he had three job
offers in one day. He opted to attend a two-year
electronics course using his G.I. Bill education
benefits, while working part time at night. With trolley
cars available for transportation, he sold his car, then
bought another one when work picked up during his second
year of school.
When he graduated, he says, "Job offers were everywhere.
Television was just getting ready to hit in 1949."
Al had enlisted in the Air Force Reserves upon his
discharge after World War II, and was on his second term
when the Korean War began. He was due for discharge in
February 1952 but the paperwork was not completed. When
he was notified by a recruiter in June that he had been
reclassified to report to Korea within 40 days, he
balked. He now had "two little kids", Kathleen June who
was born in 1949 and Alvin Vernon who was born in 1950.
"My enlistment was up in February and here it is June
and you're trying to send me to Korea?" he asked
incredulously. Despite the recruiter’s best efforts, Al
could not be persuaded and he remained at home.
In 1953 he heard Memphis was putting in a television
station and decided "it was about time to go back home."
"How would you like to go back home?" he asked June when
he got home that evening. "You mean it?" she replied.
"Yeah, I mean it," he said. He gave his employers a
week's notice then headed back to McKenzie, where he
took a week's vacation before beginning his job search.
He worked for Jacos in Jackson for a year before being
contacted by Buck and Harris Electronics, who asked him
to design a cable television system for a 265-apartment
federal housing project where antennas were not allowed
to be installed on the buildings.
"It was the first cable system in Jackson," Al beams.
When the design was complete, he enlisted the help of
two other workers to help set up the tower and install
the system that delivered a snow-free picture.
Following that success he sold a cable system to a motel
in Pinson.
In 1957 he answered an ad placed by RCA (Radio
Corporation of America) seeking qualified electronics
personnel. Following an eight-hour exam on Friday, by
mid-week he had a telegram to report the following
Monday to the RCA facility at Cherry Hill, New Jersey
for a three month training program.
After he protested he needed to give his current
employer two-weeks notice, he was given 30 days to
report.
Enroute, he met another new employee from El Paso. The
two arrived late in Philadelphia and checked in at the
YMCA. The next morning they arrived at Cherry Hill.
The men found apartments in Camden, New Jersey one on
top of the other, with Al taking the downstairs
apartment, and brought their wives and kids from home.
Their wives stayed until mid October while the men
waited for assignments to Labrador, Greenland, Iceland
or the East Coast of the United States.
"I wound up in Labrador," says Al. The assignment was
part of an early warning missile defense system being
established by the military.
He remained in the Government Service Department of RCA
for a year before transferring to the Mobile Microwave
Department in Chicago.
RCA was installing the communications and data
processing capability for the North Illinois Tollway,
using microwave technology, including state police radio
communication.
The mammoth, two-ton-plus Univac computer did all the
data processing, figured payroll for Tollway employees
and kept track of schedules.
"It looked like diesel train engine covered with steel,"
says Al, wide-eyed, in the dining room of Cathey's Café
in downtown McKenzie. "It was six or seven feet tall and
as long as this room, with a fan six feet tall with a
big electric motor blowing through it to keep it cool."
Today's computers, Al says, can do 1,000 times more what
the Univac could do, in one-millionth the time.
After five and a half years at Melrose Park, west of
Chicago, Al returned to Indianapolis where he worked in
the Mobile Division, installing 2,500 2-way radios for
Mayflower Truck Lines.
Home for Christmas in 1967, he spoke with his
brother-in-law who worked for ITT (International
Telephone and Telegraph Corporation) in Milan.
"He'd been after me for two or three years to go there,"
relates Al, who was looking at being transferred back to
Chicago from Indianapolis, albeit with a big promotion.
A visit to Milan netted an immediate job offer, thanks
to the FCC license he had maintained since 1957.
He left RCA after ten and a half years of service and
worked for ITT 18 years before retiring February 2,
1986.
As a systems reliability engineer, Al ran reliability
tests on every type of component purchased and on every
system that was made from the parts.
Sample components were tested for 1,000 hours at extreme
temperatures (-150 degrees to +150 degrees) and at 0"
and 100% humidity. Systems were put through the same
rigorous testing, which included testing noise level,
level of transmission and other technical criteria.
"ITT was a stickler for quality control; most now don't
want to spend money for quality," he says.
Later in his career, Al became a Senior Technical
Analyst, troubleshooting technical problems, in both the
Milan and Corinth, Mississippi sites.
In order to keep with the constantly changing
technology, Al spent much of his time learning.
"You have to study all the time; you have no idea how
much time I spent in the classroom," he declares. He
spent quite a bit of time teaching as well. He taught
basic and advanced electronics, wave guide theory, and
safety precautions for RCA; industrial electronics at
RETS Electronics School in Indianapolis; and AC and DC
circuits for the State Technical Institute of Memphis at
ITT Milan.
"I was a lot younger then," he says.
He credits youth with his ability, during the building
of the Illinois Tollway, to function on just a few hours
sleep many nights.
He credits his wife, with whom he has been married for
57 years, with more.
"I owe a lot to my wife." he says sincerely, "She never
did complain, even when I had to work several months in
Illinois on the Tollway trying to meet deadlines. I
might be home three hours in a 24-hour period, eat a
bite, lay down, and get up an hour and a half later and
go. I had to drive 150 miles every day as well as
working. She always supported me whatever type of work I
did and when I went to school, too."
After his retirement, on July 1, 1986 Al accepted Mayor
Joe Morris' appointment as municipal judge for McKenzie,
replacing resigning judge Bill Brush. He held the
position for a year and a half before resigning.
Still a State Magistrate since 1986, Al issues criminal
warrants and search warrants for Carroll County on
behalf of the State for McKenzie police officers as well
as State police and those in surrounding towns.
Al and June used to spend weekends camping at Land
Between the Lakes, Buchanan and other places, though he
says they haven't been for quite some time. "I love to
fish," he says, though it has been some time, as well,
since he has indulged in that favorite past time.
The couple is six months into a redecorating project of
the home they bought in McKenzie in 1977.
Al and June have five grandchildren and are members of
the First Methodist Church in McKenzie. |
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