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Scope and Contents From the Series: INTRODUCTION “Workers at Wurlitzer During World War II” is an oral history project undertaken by a class in oral history methodology at Northern Illinois University. Interviewing took place between October and December of 1989. The instructor, six graduate students, and one undergraduate interviewed sixteen people employed at Wurlitzer during the Second World War. Narrators volunteered or were found through city directories and talking to other former...

Scope and Contents From the Series: INTRODUCTION “Workers at Wurlitzer During World War II” is an oral history project undertaken by a class in oral history methodology at Northern Illinois University. Interviewing took place between October and December of 1989. The instructor, six graduate students, and one undergraduate interviewed sixteen people employed at Wurlitzer during the Second World War. Narrators volunteered or were found through city directories and talking to other former...

Scope and Contents From the Series: INTRODUCTION “Workers at Wurlitzer During World War II” is an oral history project undertaken by a class in oral history methodology at Northern Illinois University. Interviewing took place between October and December of 1989. The instructor, six graduate students, and one undergraduate interviewed sixteen people employed at Wurlitzer during the Second World War. Narrators volunteered or were found through city directories and talking to other former...

Scope and Contents

The experiences and recollections of an office employee at Wurlitzer from 1936 to 1981 are presented here.  He also describes aspects of his education and childhood, as well as production of war material, employee-management relationships, women workers, conditions during the war, conversion to peacetime production, and social activities. [transcript and 2 tapes, 92 minutes]

Scope and Contents

Vanamburg was employed at Wurlitzer from 1943 until 1976.  She discusses her childhood, education, work in the mailroom, office work, working conditions, employee-management relationships, products, activities, and concerns of female workers. [abstract and tape, 78 minutes]

Scope and Contents

These two women became friends while working at Wurlitzer. They discuss work and social life in the plant before, during and after the war. [abstract and 2 tapes]

Scope and Contents

Waldhier started at Wurlitzer as an office worker, and by the end of the war had become a plant engineer.  She discusses war production, working conditions, attitudes, and Navy influence.  She has good feelings about Wurlitzer. [abstract and tape, 60 minutes]

Scope and Contents

Sipavis was a piano stringer who became supervisor of wing spar and bat bomb production during the war.  Also discussed are training, production processes, working conditions and attitudes, and the work community at Wurlitzer from 1939 to 1949.  [abstract and tape, see also interview of his wife Agnes, OH 6.8]

Scope and Contents

Kuzan, a draftsman in Wurlitzer's Engineering Department from 1936 to 1951, discusses the drafting department, the beginnings of automation and feelings about it, attitudes and activities during the war years, but not a lot about what happened in the plant.

Scope and Contents

McDermott discusses rudder production for the target planes produced at Wurlitzer, and talks about social life at the plant.  Because she worked at Wurlitzer at two different times, she makes comparisons between war and peacetime production. [abstract and tape, 45 minutes]