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Emmy Lou Packard    2/6/79 - page 4, section 3

[[left margin]] my shipyard paintings 1945 [[/left margin]]

In cartoons for the paper (I did a weekly cartoon called Shirley the Whirley, in which a whirley crane [[strikethrough]] was [[/strikethrough]] became a whimsical participant in shipyard crises. I also did a strip cartoon called Supermac, in which a small hard-hatted shipyard worker with a propellar on him would rescue workers from horrible death planned by Nazi spies, etc. I also interviewed many workers and wrote stories, sometimes feature articles for the monthly shipyard magazine. When I went back to my shipyard apartment after work I worked the sketches into watercolors, and showed some 200 of them during the founding of the United Nations in S.F. (shown at the Raymond and Raymond Gallery). There was an excellent review - in fact, several. I'll try to find them and quote pertinent parts. They were the only show that came out of the shipyards which had any real vitality and feeling. One critic favorably compared them to the work of a man, not a woman (womwn's lib had not penetrated consciousness at that time)

[[left margin]] shipyard anecdote [[/left margin]]

In an interview with an old Scot shipwight, I asked him how he actually began a ship - the first step. "Well," he said, "Furst you launch th' ship and then you lay the double-bottom." A somewhat obtuse anateur, I was confused, since the double-bottom was indeed on the very bottom of the ship. "How in the world do you do that?" I asked him. It took us ten minutes to clarify the problem: you launch the finished ship which is on the shipway to get the way cleared for another ship. THEN you lay the double-bottom for the next ship; I had many such problems with communication. But the workers were patient with me.

[[left margin]] censorship 2 Fore 'n aft [[/left margin]]

Our newspaper office was in Yard One with shipyard headquarters. We prepared for the final layout of each weekly paper, and then submitted it to Management for censorship. We were mostly socialists or communists, with a couple of good-natured republicans, and we tried to get as much progressive material in the paper as we could. On the Lincoln's birthday issue we did a bang-up job with many of lincoln's good quotes and a montage   I made for the front page with a big head of Lincoln at the top with portraits of shipyard workers, many black and other minorities completing the montage. We had some pretty strong stuff in the issue relating to minority rights, and expected some censorship. To our surprise it went through and was printed exactly as we had done it. A few days later we found out why. The yard had been threatened by an investigation by FEPC (Fair Employment Practices Commission) for unfair hiring practices. We had unwittingly saved the face of Management, alas. Mice and people.

[[left margin]] shipyards pre-fob [[/left margin]]

Henry Kaiser's shipyards had, I believe, pioneered with pre-fabricating large parts of ships rapidly and then assembling them. Yard 2 was the biggest, containing the plate shop, the hot slab and many other fabricating devices. Prefab had a building all its own where whole fore-peaks and after-peaks of ships were assembled and then stores out in the yard, and two of these would move a forepeak to the rest of the ship on the ways and it would be riveted and welded in place. Part of our job as writers was to encourage competition of the various yards (1,2,3 &4) to see which could get the most work done. In yard 4 they were changing AP-3's, much bigger ships, from Navy specifications to Maritime Commission specifications. Every ship was first built to one specifications and then torn apart and changed to the other, at a fabulous cost. (Check with Delgados)

[[left margin]] Kaiser health plan [[/left margin]] 

The Kaiser Health Plan began during this time, and all shipyard workers joined it. There was a clinic in the yards, and the first Kaiser Hospital was built on McArthur and Broadway in Oakland. It was an innovation in medecal care that is still providing the best health care at lowest cost in the nation. But of course a national public health care is the proper answer. [[strikethrough]] The [[/strikethrough]] Employees of the Federal Government get free health care in excellent hospitals. Why not everybody? No answer except capitalist greed, [[strikethrough]] children. [[/strikethrough]] which extends to the medical profession.