The St. Lawrence Seaway and Power Project: An Oral History of the Greatest Construction Show on Earth

7. The Core of the Corps

248 7 TheCoreoftheCorps shirley doxtater, the society editor for the Watertown Daily Times, in an August 27, 1954, article called the wives of Seaway workers in Massena “the core of the Corps.” Even though these women never poured concrete or shoveled dirt, each served as a supportive and devoted spouse for their husbands and managed to provide a sense of stability for their children. Like most women in the early 1950s the wives of engineers and equipment operators had married young, had numerous children, and saw motherhood as the primary source of their identity. Because they had to adapt to living in different locations every few years, these women formed lifelong friendships with each other based on the shared experiences of child rearing that replaced family and ethnic ties. They also joined churches, prayer groups, and recreational leagues, and attended social events as a means of temporarily escaping their husbands and children. The women who lived in Massena, New York, and Cornwall, Ontario, during the construction of the Seaway struggled to live in a world of new opportunities that they could not take advantage of. For some, this prison of domesticity prevented them from pursuing careers. Many were the first females in their families to receive college degrees and had worked in their professions before their marriage. However, married women who sought employment outside the home faced criticism from mothers-in-law who thought they should be satisfied with being good wives and mothers. Therefore, women bought into the new consumer age and found personal satisfaction in purchasing the best clothes and appliances and in having the latest furniture and decorations. The Seaway wives claim that the established role for women in the early 1950s would have left them feeling professionally stymied no matter The Core of the Corps   |   249 where they resided. Staying at home to care for numerous children while their husbands worked on a project they cherished made them feel lonely and unfulfilled. They also dealt with unfriendly natives at schools and stores and with unfamiliar weather, but managed to make the best of the situation because of the love and respect of their husbands and a closeknit group of female friends. These interviews offer not only a view of the changing life of women during the 1950s, but of the new dynamics of marriage, child rearing, and opportunities in the workplace for females that often clashed with traditional social mores. Marge Wiles It was such an experience! When I arrived in Massena in April 1956, there was still snow on the ground. When my family and I had left Kansas it was spring. So that was a shock! My husband, Don, and I knew all about cold weather because we were born and raised in Omaha, Nebraska. However, Massena makes the news at least once a year as being the coldest place in the nation. The first year I lived there it was forty-four below and my husband and I couldn’t get over the fact that nothing stopped. Everybody was prepared for it, and they didn’t miss a day of work. The weather was a shock even though we were from the Midwest and used to cold weather, but it was very dry and the kids just loved it. Stuff just proceeded. My husband and I met in high school and got married when I was twenty and he was twenty-one. Don’s first job after he graduated from the University of Nebraska was on a dam in a small town in Nebraska with the Bureau of Reclamation. He was on his second job with them in Stockton , Kansas, when he heard about the opportunity on the Seaway project . One of the men whom he worked with on that job left a year before us to go to Massena. We also corresponded with friends we had from Nebraska and learned they had relocated there too. Since we had many friends already there, pretty soon we were on our way. We had helped them move out and when we got to Massena they helped us move in, and this went on for seven more moves. We helped each other out. We stayed friends for all of these years. I just moved with my husband from job to job and I was always so proud to do it. My husband made $7,400 in 1956, the first year he worked 250   |   The...