Description
In this interview, Kerby Parnell discusses her life of adventure. She migrated to Dinuba, California from Arkansas with her family as a child in search of better opportunities. In Dinuba, her family worked in fruit and cotton, as part of California's agricultural industry. Then, when Parnell was a teenager, she, her parents, and her grandmother all went to work in the Kaiser shipyards, making for three generations of one family represented simultaneously in Kaiser Shipyard 2. Also during the war, Parnell worked at the Fox Theater, and then later after the boys came home with Rheem Manufacturing Company, Hercules Powder Company, and the Mechanics Bank, where she works still. Mrs. Parnell's interview illuminates the themes of migration, identity, labor, and a changing wartime Richmond.