Description
Maria Chidester was born in 1924 in Laredo, Texas. In 1941, she began working on wing repairs at the naval air station in Corpus Christi, Texas. Chidester remained working there until the end of the war, at which point she returned to Laredo and took a job at the Hamilton Hotel before eventually moving to California with her husband. In this interview, Chidester recalls growing up in a Spanish-speaking household in Texas, working at Corpus Christi, social life during work and the war, and discrimination and demographic change in Whittier, California.