Arthur Asselin, Page Three

Edited interview with Lillian Charron, daughter of Arthur Asselin, and Lillian's daughter, Theresa Mitrowski, granddaughter of Arthur Asselin. Interview conducted by Joe Manning (JM) on January 22, 2008.

Lillian: I never had a picture of my dad when he was little, so it was kind of a shock. After looking through a lot of his pictures and comparing them, I started to see some resemblance. And the more I look at it now, the more he looks like my dad.

JM: Did you know that your father was working in the Dwight Mills at that age?

Lillian: No, I didn't. He was building houses when he married my mother. That was in 1919. He was working for a contractor.

Lillian: I don't think he went to high school. Everything he knew he learned on his own.

Lillian: He was born in Canada. When he first came to America, he lived up by the Dwight Mills, in the company blocks on Front Street.

Lillian: No. I was born in 1925, right before the big crash in '29. Then we had the Depression, and it was rough. Nobody was building houses. My parents had five little mouths to feed. My father got a job at the Bosch (American Bosch, located in Springfield) in 1936. He was working on magnetos (electric generators for ignition systems). He did that until he retired. Even after that, he was doing outside jobs. My father was tough. He could do anything. You see that garage in my driveway? My father built that. See all these cabinets here? He built them, too. He built cabinets for the church rectory.

JM: Did they have a union at Bosch?

Lillian: Yes, and it was a great place to work.

JM: Did he move up the ladder in his job?

Lillian: No, he wasn't a boss or anything like that. He just went in every day, brought his lunch box, and did his job.

JM: Do you think he liked his job?

Lillian: Well, he never complained. When he came home, he was tired. My father never complained, because he loved to work. I'm the same way. I'd go nuts if I didn't have anything to do.

JM: Did you work as a child?

Lillian: Yes. I also worked at the Dwight Mills. There was a hat company there. I started at age 16. We were poor, and I wanted to make a few bucks so I could buy myself some pretty clothes. Do you know how much I made? I was making 35 cents an hour. But it was a job, and jobs were hard to come by then. I used to trim hats, 35 cents a dozen, and I struggled to make one dozen an hour. I worked from 8:00 in the morning till 6:30 in the evening. In the summertime, we made winter hats; in the wintertime, we made summer hats. We made the silks in the summer and the straws in the winter. In November, they would lay us off, while they changed over the machines. Then my sister got a job at the Bosch, so I went down there, and they took me right away. That was during the war (WWII). I was 17. So I never graduated. I quit with one more year to go. As poor as we were, my mother sent us to Cathedral High School in Springfield. We walked down every day to take the bus.

JM: Did you work after you were married?

Lillian: Only until my daughter was born a year after I got married. I hated to quit, because I was making twice as much as my husband then. But I used to shovel all the snow, mow the lawn, and things like that. I even painted my apartment three times. My father taught me a lot of things. I'm pretty handy with the hammer, too. He taught my husband a lot of things. My husband was not handy at all when we got married.

JM: With all the work your father was doing, did he have any time for you when you were a kid?

Lillian: Oh sure, he had time for that. He was fun to be with. He used to take us out tobogganing.

JM: What would you do together as a family on the weekends?

Lillian: We liked to play cards. We always had a house full of company. My mother had five kids, but she was happy in her house. She wasn't a visitor. So everybody visited her. Many times, we slept on the floor to give up our beds to company. When she was older, my mother said she must have been crazy making her kids sleep on the floor. But kids don't mind sleeping on the floor. In the summer, it was cooler on the floor.