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In California, Mavis, Doris and Sarah had no trouble finding jobs in the aircraft industry. While finding jobs was easy, finding a place to live for four people was another story. The family decided a better plan was to buy a house in Pasadena, make payments and resell when they left California. They went to work for McDonald Douglas Aircraft.
Doris found a higher paying job at American Cyanamid monitoring the pressure in tanks of gas – gas so deadly, that the company had escape windows with long roll out slides in the building. The sisters agreed not to tell their mother that Doris was working in potentially dangerous conditions. Sarah considered switching jobs for the higher salary. Older sister Mavis was against the idea, though what really kept Sarah from working at American Cyanamid was that she considered the height of the windows she might have to jump out of to land into the slides. She was scared to climb up on the fourth step of a ladder. She didn’t care much for the third step either. Higher pay fell to the wayside.
According to Doris, Mavis ended up “working on something special” that she wasn’t allowed to discuss. Sarah also stayed at McDonald Douglas. I ask Doris if they talked about their work between the sisters. Quite seriously she said, “we were at war and working in the war industry. They told us not to talk about our work and we didn’t.”
As soon as the 3-year race ban was lifted in September 1945, Mavis honed her record keeping skills by frequenting the LA Coliseum and Saugus tracks, writing down lineups, finishes and individual finishing times. She interviewed drivers and wrote newspaper style descriptions of the races.
3 -year race ban has been lifted and the Miller sisters high tail it to the first nearby races. Mavis begins her California racing album.
Fastest time was Billy Vukovitch, a rookie who the announcer as well as race newspaper columnists were incorrectly naming, “Bukovitch” as proven by newspaper articles kept by Mavis.
Also of note: #48 Lyle Dickey who Mavis and Larry knew in the Northeast. Both homesick, Lyle and Mavis reminisced about prewar midget racing and friends back home.
Bill “Bukovich” not a shy man, had corrected track announcers and newspapermen making his name, Vukovitch, the beginning of his legacy.
Johnny MacDowell went on to win many races and competed in the Indy 500 from 1949 to 1952, Shortly after the 1952 Indy race, he was killed in a Milwaukee Mile race.
Larry was drafted into the Army February 11, 1943, and served in Europe as a Sergeant in the motor corps of Company D, 312 Medical Battalion – a MASH unit, 87th Infantry Division under General Patton. His Division was at the Battle of the Bulge. Mavis had been receiving V-mail from the front lines.
Larry was honorably discharged on September 30, 1945, having earned a European African Middle Eastern Theater Campaign Medal, 3 Bronze Stars, a Good Conduct Medal and a Meritorious Service Unit Insignia. On September 20th, 1945, while, “Rosie the Riveter” Mavis was still working at McDonald Douglas Aircraft in California, Glen Gallup brought the two midgets to Victory Speedway in Middletown N.Y. where he was to meet Larry who was being discharged from Fort Benning, Georgia. Before going home, Larry met Glen at Middletown to race on the newly paved inside 1/5-mile track – something his mother didn’t appreciate as she sat waiting for her son’s return from war.
At the end of the war, the Miller women put their San Gabriel house up for sale. Mavis was working on the C-54 Skymaster at McDonald Douglas Aircraft by the time almost all the women were laid off by industries to hire soldiers returning home. The sisters and their mother took a rather leisurely sightseeing drive and arrived in the Catskills by the end of October 1945.