StoryCorps: Lilly and Don Rich (Web Extra)

Don: Well, as the story goes along, we finally, I was, we were on the boat. I mean my Company, the service, was on a boat heading for the South Pacific when the war ended in Japan. So instead of continuing on to Japan they turned the boat and came back to New York City and by September that year I was discharged from the service. I had enough point to get out of the service and then there was the long wait after that before Lilly could finally…

Lilly: I didn’t come over until March of the next year.

Don: Right.

Lilly: Now, there were thousands and thousands of English girls, Scottish girls, who had married GI’s. Some of them had children and when the war ended their husbands all came back to the States and they were left. Now there was an act of Congress to bring all these women over to the United States and I came March, 1946. I came over on a liberty ship; the H. B. Alexander. It wasn’t a very comfortable trip. The boat was crowded with women and children all coming over. When we got to New York harbor, most of their husbands were there to meet them, but you weren’t there. You didn’t come to meet me and I stayed on that boat overnight. I had told you not to come…

Don: That’s right.

Lilly: Because we needed all the money that we could have to start up housekeeping and I was used to traveling by train, but I didn’t realize how far it was to come up here to New Hampshire. Now, on the way up I had gone out on the little observation deck of the train and a woman out and stood beside me and she asked me where I was going. And I said, “I’m going to Berlin New Hampshire.” “Oh!” she said, “They won’t like you there. The people up there in New Hampshire don’t take kindly to strangers.”

Don: Well, it worked out I guess.

Lilly: Well, I was very out of place when I got here. It was nothing to what I have been used to.

Don: I realize how difficult it was and…

Lilly: One thing that surprised me was the war had been over almost a year and you were all still partying.

Don: Oh, is that what we were doing?

Lilly: Yes. The whole city!

Don: The whole city here of Berlin was partying for about a year before anybody settled down to go to work.

Lilly: Yeah. We had, we had a rough time in the beginning because you didn’t work for a while.

Don: Work was very scarce in this area anyway…

Lilly: Work was scarce…

Don: Mostly wood…

Lilly: And housing was scarce.

Don: Yuh.

Lilly: I think we moved about…

Don: Nine times? Somewheres around that?

Lilly: Oh, lots of times. We stayed with your mother for a while and then they moved to Gorham and we moved with them. You were working in the saw mill…

Don: Saw mill, yup. And that’s where we went for our first apartment.

Lilly: Yes.

Don: On the third floor.

Lilly: And then you went to work for Uncle Victor on the wood truck and that’s when we moved to Milan.

Don: Yup. And that’s when we bought a house in Milan and we’ve been in the same house ever since. Well, we lived, we lived in rental places for a couple of years.

Lilly: The summer before Susan was born we were living up on your grandmother’s farm.

Don: Yea, in that camp…

Lilly: In a little camp…with no running water, no electricity…

Don: That camp was built by my father for my mother when she had to get out of the city for pollution purposes. To get somewhere where she could breathe better and that’s why that little camp was built. But it was amazing that we, that we got through that little episode. But after that we had a decent house. We’ve been in the same house for 60 years. But I stop and think of all the, all of the uh, the uh, hard work of working in the woods and uh I did, I did have a trade which I received in the Service and I couldn’t even do that because there wasn’t that much kind of work around here to do. So I had to work in the woods on a truck and uh, it was, it was tough going. Of course, at that time we were starting our family when Alan was born and then Susan and eventually Brian.

Web Extra: Sadly, we didn't have time to broadcast many of the deatils of Don and Lilly's remarkable courtship story. Click here for more of the story.

Web Extra: Though her father was in the military, he didn't approve of her choice of Don, a G.I., as a husband. Click here for more of the story.