Dolly Hudson remembers working behind safety glass, her hands pressing together two types of powder to make a bomb fuse.
The names of those powders escape her now.
"Well, you know, that was 60 some years ago. I should have kept a diary. I didn't. It's all up here," she said, pointing to her head.
But Jill Bush is aiming to get Hudson's story from her head and onto paper.
Bush, 21, is one of two St. Vincent College students interning this summer with the Laurel Area Interfaith Volunteer Caregivers Inc. Faith in Action program.
They are taking the oral histories of senior citizens in the Greater Latrobe and Ligonier areas who are clients of Faith In Action, a nonprofit program that sends out volunteers to aid the elderly around their homes, take them to appointments or just visit.
Jane Kerr, the program's executive director, said she discovered several years ago that friendly visits from strangers provide needed stimulation for seniors.
"Strangers provide that because they don't know the life stories, and the elderly have someone to listen to their lifelong stories," Kerr said.
Kerr had heard so many interesting stories from clients that the program developed a memories book to capture that history and get young people involved in visiting the seniors.
A professor at St. Vincent got her students involved for a semester, but that ended when she left the college.
"I finally decided to call it 'oral histories' to see if I could get any interest and, bingo, it worked and I got two interns for the summer," Kerr said.
Bush, a history major at St. Vincent, is writing her senior thesis on American and German women in the work force during World War II.
So she's interviewing women like Hudson, who worked in factories while men were off at war.
"It's amazing to me, because a lot of the women I've spoken to said, 'I just did my job,'" Bush said. "From an outsider looking in, I think everything they did was just amazing."
Hudson worked at two factories in the Derry area that made fuses for bombs and hand grenades.
"It was a very simple process. A kid could have done it, but there were explosives involved in it," she said. "That made it dangerous."
Hudson, 89, and living at Loyalhanna Care Center in Unity, said it wasn't difficult for women to find a job during the war.
"Every place was hiring," she said. "If you wanted a job, you just went."
She worked eight-hour shifts while her mother cared for her four children. Her husband, Eugene, was serving in the Navy.
"My mother raised my family so I could go to work without any fear about my kids," she said.
Women made the fuses. The only men were the bosses.
"That was telling us something, wasn't it?" Hudson said.
Intern Kylee Deglau, 21, a psychology major at St. Vincent, has been getting to know 88-year-old Anthony D'Avanti of Unity.
On a recent day, she interviewed him about his experiences after his eight years in the Navy before and during World War II.
D'Avanti, a Jeannette native and the son of Italian immigrants, told her he attended St. Vincent College on the GI Bill.
But when she heard that he hitchhiked to classes every day, she peppered him with more questions.
To him, it wasn't a big deal.
"The guys got to know me every day I'm out there hitchhiking," he said. "They got to know me. They picked me up, so it's not as different as it seems."
Deglau said the internship has opened her eyes.
"Their lives were so much different then," she said. "You can't compare it to now."
Kerr anticipates the histories might be used in a book, although the details aren't worked out yet.
What she does know is that the program will continue.
"I want to capture the memories and rich history of this area before it is too late," she said.
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