SSGT. Norris Dearmon
US Army Air Corp - Dental Technician
615th Technical SS 1379 AAF
Keflavik, Iceland 11/42 – 1/46
US Army Air Corp - Dental Technician
615th Technical SS 1379 AAF
Keflavik, Iceland 11/42 – 1/46
Norris Dearmon is a WW2 veteran and, in his retirement, became a historian for his town of Kannapolis, NC. I had the benefit of being able to read Norris’ autobiography, in which he painstakingly details what life was like in part of America throughout his 100 years. Norris’ story in the following pages opens a door into 100 years of technological developments and changes to everyday life. I hope readers will find these details eye-opening, while others may have a first-hand recollection.
Norris Dearmon was born on August 7th, 1922 in Statesville, a small town in North Carolina. His parents were Carrie Epsy Nicks, born in 1894 and Willie O’Neil Dearmon, born in 1896. Norris was delivered at home by Dr. Tatum but he doesn’t know how they were able to let Dr. Tatum know it was time, since they didn’t have a telephone. Howard, his younger brother and his two sisters Mary Frances and Betty Ruth were also born at home and delivered by Dr. Black. Carrie had two children previous to Norris but the first child, Cecil, died at the age of 1 from bronchial pneumonia and the second child, Margaret, died from colitis at the age of 2.
His father went to school in a one room school house and went on to get a job as a cotton mill operator. His mother also worked in a cotton plant until she and Willie married. Sometime in 1927 Willie bought a service station in Concord, NC where he did some mechanical repairs but mainly sold gas, bread, cookies, candy and ice cream. Norris was told that the family moved to Kannapolis to be near his grandmother. He was also told that during their 60 mile trip, their car had had 17 flat tires resulting from unpaved roads and the “balloon tires” of the day.
In 1928 Willie sold the business and took a job selling Life Insurance for Durham Life Insurance Company. The family bought a new Chevrolet and moved into a two story home. Norris remembers that these were good times and his father was “making good money”. Then came Black Tuesday on October 29th, 1929 that brought the stock market crash followed by The Great Depression. “Suddenly we didn’t have a car” Norris recalled. Times were hard for everyone. Not much money and very little food. Norris recalled the winters being much colder and people were burning furniture for heat. To make matters worse Carrie came down with tuberculosis and was confined to bed. His father had a steady job. Remarkably people continued to make their insurance payments.
In January of ’31 his mother died and as was common at that time, the wake was held in the living room of their home. His father had an argument with the Durham Life Insurance Company over the policy he held on Carrie’s life and he quit. Fortunately, he found a job in a local Rayon plant. It was one of the few plants that hadn’t closed. Norris remembers him working 12 hour shifts. In ’31 they moved to be closer to the extended family and lived on his grandmother’s farm. There was no electricity and an outdoor privy about 100 feet from the house. Norris chopped firewood for the stove to heat the house and his father bought groceries on credit at Mr. Hilderbran’s store and settled up on pay day.
Norris had other recollections of those times including no television so the radio and the motion pictures shows in town were the primary sources of entertainment. Norris also enjoyed reading comic books and the funny papers. Saving money was an important part of life. When they were able to afford another car his father would often cut the engine and coast down hills to save on gas that was selling for 10 cents per gallon. Norris wore his shoes until holes developed in the soles and then he would get rubber soles and glue them to the shoes. Unfortunately, the glue didn’t last long and he ended up with floppy shoes like a clown. So he preferred to go bare foot. Christmas was meager and presents were typically oranges or Brazilian nuts or hard candies which were considered real treats. They cut down cedar Christmas trees and decorated them with homemade ornaments. Norris spent much of his childhood working to earn some money or doing chores around the house. For a while he had a paper route.
By 1938 he had a driver’s license and quit the paper route to take a job at the local textile mill. By the summer of 1939 he started dating Dorothy Peck Pethel (Dot), a little blonde girl who caught his attention. Norris missed a year of school in the early part of The Depression and Dot was one year ahead of him and graduated in 1940. Norris finished in ’41 and turned 19 years of age. They both had jobs at the mill and Norris worked in the billing and shipping department. There he learned to operate the tabulating equipment that used punch cards and were the earliest form of computers.
On December 7th of 1941 Norris was sitting at the counter of Black’s Drug Store in Midway, NC enjoying a Coke. The radio was on and the announcer broke in to read the news about the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor. Norris knew it was just a matter of time before he would be drafted. He headed to Willifords Jewelry Store and bought an engagement ring and wedding band on credit. He was earning $100/mo. Norris and Dot were married April 4th, 1942.
Norris received his draft notice and was inducted on November 30th, 1942. He was sent to Camp Croft in South Carolina for a physical and was then sent home to ‘get his affairs in order’. One week later he boarded a bus to FT. Bragg and upon arrival he was issued a uniform and given a battery of tests to determine his military occupation. Uncle Sam told Norris he was selected to be part of a 48 man medical detachment and his next stop was Camp Kearns in Salt Lake City. Norris was given the choice between working in the areas of pharmacy, x-ray or dentistry. He recalled knowing nothing about any of them so he picked dentistry.
The dentistry route qualified him to be promoted to Corporal with a pay check of $63/wk. With little basic training Norris boarded a train and headed to Fitzsimmons Army Hospital in Aurora, Colorado. He arrived in the early morning of New Year’s Day 1943. He received permission to live off base and sent for Dot. His day consisted of attending class until 3pm and then, weather permitting, 90 minutes of drills. The classes covered dental anatomy, dental materials, x-rays, crowns, bridges and other dental procedures. On April 6th, 1943 he graduated. Next stop was Houlton Army Base in Maine.
At Houlton, Norris worked in the dental clinic from 8am to 5pm practicing what he had learned in school. Dot joined him and found a job at a local drug store. In June of ’43 Norris volunteered to join a medical team that would be set to Iceland. The volunteers headed to Presque Isle, Maine where they boarded a plane that made stops in Labrador and Greenland before landing at Meek Field in Keflavick, Iceland.
When the Nazi’s invaded Norway and Denmark in April ’40, Iceland declared itself neutral. Great Britain, concerned that Iceland could fall into the hands of the Nazi’s, giving them greater control of the North Atlantic as well as base for their aircraft, invaded Iceland to secure this strategic location. Iceland did not have a military and the British did not meet any resistance. Later the Canadians arrived to help and them the Americans. No actual combat took place in Iceland but there were a significant number of plane crashes. Norris remembers one particular time a Nazi plane tried to get close to the base and take out the electrical grid but was shot down by a P38.
The equipment in the dental clinic was not state-of-the-art. The drills were powered by foot pedal rather than electricity. With some good old American ingenuity the mechanics were able to connect electricity by taking extra material and a spare motor to get a current flowing. Norris learned to do gum treatments and cleanings and was eventually promoted and given a raise as well as a 20% increase for overseas pay and was earning $93.60/mo.
With the large number of bombers, fighters and weather reconnaissance planes coming and going crashes were inevitable. Stiff winds and fog made landings difficult particularly for inexperience pilots. To get to Iceland planes had to stop multiple times to refuel and the refueling sites were a full tank of fuel away. Some planes ran out of fuel and crashed. There was always an ambulance on standby and Norris took his turn manning the ambulance.
When they weren’t working there were trips to Reykjavik, the beer was abundant and cheap and Norris remembers the food as quite good. Norris joined the Army choir and sang in concerts in his spare time. He also recalls the USO coming to the base for performances with Bob Hope, Jack Benny and Marlene Dietrich.
By May of ’44 Norris recalled a steady volume of planes coming and going at the base. Lots of C-54’s bringing men and supplies to the front lines and bringing back wounded soldiers.
On December 11th 1944 Norris’ tour was up and he jumped on a C-54 headed back to the States. After a brief stop in Newfoundland it was on to Washington DC. When he landed he called Dot to let her know he was back and waiting for his orders. His orders came through for Dow Field Hospital in Bangor Maine by way of Greensboro, NC. That gave him a chance to see Dot and his family in Kannapolis.
He and Dot headed to Bangor and by August of ’45 Norris had enough points to get out of the Army, but Uncle Sam thought otherwise and told him he had an essential job and could not leave. They gave him a promotion to Staff Sergeant and a raise in consideration for extending his service. By the end of 1945 with the war in Europe and the Pacific having been won, military operations were shutting down and he was given orders to Greensboro where he was discharged on January 22, 1946.
Norris and Dot found a one room apartment with a shared bathroom and Norris enrolled in Lenoir Rhyne College in the Pre-Dental program. Norris squeezed in a part-time job at the local A&P working as a cashier and also helped out in stocking shelves. He recalled a lot of basic necessities such as soap, canned goods and sugar were still in short supply as the war economy had not yet transitioned back to a civilian economy. He recalled as soon as the products came in the people would swarm into the store and try to buy as many as they could. They would trample the stock boys to get to the shelves and sometimes fights broke out.
Dot found a job at a local manufacturing company but the company began to experience financial difficulties as their war volume declined faster than they could convert to a civilian product line. Concerned layoffs were coming Dot found another job at Spainhour’s Department Store. In the post-war economy automobiles were hard to come by. Eventually the young couple saved $750 to buy a used Chevrolet. They also took advantage of surplus government apartments given to the college and they were able to get a one room apartment that had its own bathroom with a shower. The apartment was heated by a coal stove.
Norris took extra classes and graduated early so he could save some of his GI scholarship to pay for dental school. He applied to several dental schools, but much to his surprise all of the programs were full and most programs were accepting only in-state students. At the time North Carolina did not have any dental schools. He received an offer from The University of Kentucky but they would not be able to take him for three years. Not wanting to begin his career as a dentist at the age of 31, Norris decided to look for a job. Norris found a position in the machine room at Cannon Mills and they also hired Dot as a keypunch operator. Initially Norris was working on various tabulators and early computing machines, but he was quickly moved into the office to help with planning all of the new projects that were made possible by the ever increasing advancements and sophistication of the early computers. It was late 1947 and Norris was making $390/mo.
Life started to return to normal and people were doing the things they had done before the war. The big change was the prevalence of automobiles which made it much easier for people to get together and be social. There was no television so the radio and movies were still the primary means of entertainment. At Christmas they would cut down their own Christmas trees because artificial trees hadn’t been invented. He remembers folks taking lots of photographs.
By 1948 Norris was earning $3,000/yr and was maxing out on his contributions to Social Security. The couple had traded-in their ’41 Chevrolet for a used ’47 Plymouth and bought a 5 room house on a 75’x100’ lot for $5,500 and financed it with a GI FHA loan at 4%.
In 1953 the couple had their first of 4 children. Cannon Mills was growing and turning Kannapolis into a Textile Hub. The company’s computing capabilities were growing also. In 1959 the company purchased its first large scale computer made by Remington Rand which had its own air conditioned room. By 1960 they were running three shifts in the computer room. By 1963 Interstate 85 was completed near Charlotte, NC and the family traded-in their car for a Plymouth station wagon with 7,000 miles. Cannon Mills was still expanding and built a new building that would house a new computer they were purchasing from General Electric which they hoped would make punch cards obsolete.
Life went on and Norris and Dot were active in their church, all four children graduated from college followed by 5 grandchildren and 4 great grandchildren. Norris retired after 40 years of service at Cannon. After he retired he became the local historian for Kannapolis and is known as Mr. History. He and Dot founded the Kannapolis History Associates which led to a history room at the Kannapolis Library.
Dot passed away in February 2016 just two months short of their 74 wedding anniversary.
I asked about the prevailing mood of the country during WWII. He remembers everybody wanting to win the war so they could get back on with their lives. I asked him what he thought of his time in the service. “I had a good time.”
Norris, thank you for your time in the service, your dedication to preserving history and helping to put an end to punch cards.
Norris Dearmon was born on August 7th, 1922 in Statesville, a small town in North Carolina. His parents were Carrie Epsy Nicks, born in 1894 and Willie O’Neil Dearmon, born in 1896. Norris was delivered at home by Dr. Tatum but he doesn’t know how they were able to let Dr. Tatum know it was time, since they didn’t have a telephone. Howard, his younger brother and his two sisters Mary Frances and Betty Ruth were also born at home and delivered by Dr. Black. Carrie had two children previous to Norris but the first child, Cecil, died at the age of 1 from bronchial pneumonia and the second child, Margaret, died from colitis at the age of 2.
His father went to school in a one room school house and went on to get a job as a cotton mill operator. His mother also worked in a cotton plant until she and Willie married. Sometime in 1927 Willie bought a service station in Concord, NC where he did some mechanical repairs but mainly sold gas, bread, cookies, candy and ice cream. Norris was told that the family moved to Kannapolis to be near his grandmother. He was also told that during their 60 mile trip, their car had had 17 flat tires resulting from unpaved roads and the “balloon tires” of the day.
In 1928 Willie sold the business and took a job selling Life Insurance for Durham Life Insurance Company. The family bought a new Chevrolet and moved into a two story home. Norris remembers that these were good times and his father was “making good money”. Then came Black Tuesday on October 29th, 1929 that brought the stock market crash followed by The Great Depression. “Suddenly we didn’t have a car” Norris recalled. Times were hard for everyone. Not much money and very little food. Norris recalled the winters being much colder and people were burning furniture for heat. To make matters worse Carrie came down with tuberculosis and was confined to bed. His father had a steady job. Remarkably people continued to make their insurance payments.
In January of ’31 his mother died and as was common at that time, the wake was held in the living room of their home. His father had an argument with the Durham Life Insurance Company over the policy he held on Carrie’s life and he quit. Fortunately, he found a job in a local Rayon plant. It was one of the few plants that hadn’t closed. Norris remembers him working 12 hour shifts. In ’31 they moved to be closer to the extended family and lived on his grandmother’s farm. There was no electricity and an outdoor privy about 100 feet from the house. Norris chopped firewood for the stove to heat the house and his father bought groceries on credit at Mr. Hilderbran’s store and settled up on pay day.
Norris had other recollections of those times including no television so the radio and the motion pictures shows in town were the primary sources of entertainment. Norris also enjoyed reading comic books and the funny papers. Saving money was an important part of life. When they were able to afford another car his father would often cut the engine and coast down hills to save on gas that was selling for 10 cents per gallon. Norris wore his shoes until holes developed in the soles and then he would get rubber soles and glue them to the shoes. Unfortunately, the glue didn’t last long and he ended up with floppy shoes like a clown. So he preferred to go bare foot. Christmas was meager and presents were typically oranges or Brazilian nuts or hard candies which were considered real treats. They cut down cedar Christmas trees and decorated them with homemade ornaments. Norris spent much of his childhood working to earn some money or doing chores around the house. For a while he had a paper route.
By 1938 he had a driver’s license and quit the paper route to take a job at the local textile mill. By the summer of 1939 he started dating Dorothy Peck Pethel (Dot), a little blonde girl who caught his attention. Norris missed a year of school in the early part of The Depression and Dot was one year ahead of him and graduated in 1940. Norris finished in ’41 and turned 19 years of age. They both had jobs at the mill and Norris worked in the billing and shipping department. There he learned to operate the tabulating equipment that used punch cards and were the earliest form of computers.
On December 7th of 1941 Norris was sitting at the counter of Black’s Drug Store in Midway, NC enjoying a Coke. The radio was on and the announcer broke in to read the news about the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor. Norris knew it was just a matter of time before he would be drafted. He headed to Willifords Jewelry Store and bought an engagement ring and wedding band on credit. He was earning $100/mo. Norris and Dot were married April 4th, 1942.
Norris received his draft notice and was inducted on November 30th, 1942. He was sent to Camp Croft in South Carolina for a physical and was then sent home to ‘get his affairs in order’. One week later he boarded a bus to FT. Bragg and upon arrival he was issued a uniform and given a battery of tests to determine his military occupation. Uncle Sam told Norris he was selected to be part of a 48 man medical detachment and his next stop was Camp Kearns in Salt Lake City. Norris was given the choice between working in the areas of pharmacy, x-ray or dentistry. He recalled knowing nothing about any of them so he picked dentistry.
The dentistry route qualified him to be promoted to Corporal with a pay check of $63/wk. With little basic training Norris boarded a train and headed to Fitzsimmons Army Hospital in Aurora, Colorado. He arrived in the early morning of New Year’s Day 1943. He received permission to live off base and sent for Dot. His day consisted of attending class until 3pm and then, weather permitting, 90 minutes of drills. The classes covered dental anatomy, dental materials, x-rays, crowns, bridges and other dental procedures. On April 6th, 1943 he graduated. Next stop was Houlton Army Base in Maine.
At Houlton, Norris worked in the dental clinic from 8am to 5pm practicing what he had learned in school. Dot joined him and found a job at a local drug store. In June of ’43 Norris volunteered to join a medical team that would be set to Iceland. The volunteers headed to Presque Isle, Maine where they boarded a plane that made stops in Labrador and Greenland before landing at Meek Field in Keflavick, Iceland.
When the Nazi’s invaded Norway and Denmark in April ’40, Iceland declared itself neutral. Great Britain, concerned that Iceland could fall into the hands of the Nazi’s, giving them greater control of the North Atlantic as well as base for their aircraft, invaded Iceland to secure this strategic location. Iceland did not have a military and the British did not meet any resistance. Later the Canadians arrived to help and them the Americans. No actual combat took place in Iceland but there were a significant number of plane crashes. Norris remembers one particular time a Nazi plane tried to get close to the base and take out the electrical grid but was shot down by a P38.
The equipment in the dental clinic was not state-of-the-art. The drills were powered by foot pedal rather than electricity. With some good old American ingenuity the mechanics were able to connect electricity by taking extra material and a spare motor to get a current flowing. Norris learned to do gum treatments and cleanings and was eventually promoted and given a raise as well as a 20% increase for overseas pay and was earning $93.60/mo.
With the large number of bombers, fighters and weather reconnaissance planes coming and going crashes were inevitable. Stiff winds and fog made landings difficult particularly for inexperience pilots. To get to Iceland planes had to stop multiple times to refuel and the refueling sites were a full tank of fuel away. Some planes ran out of fuel and crashed. There was always an ambulance on standby and Norris took his turn manning the ambulance.
When they weren’t working there were trips to Reykjavik, the beer was abundant and cheap and Norris remembers the food as quite good. Norris joined the Army choir and sang in concerts in his spare time. He also recalls the USO coming to the base for performances with Bob Hope, Jack Benny and Marlene Dietrich.
By May of ’44 Norris recalled a steady volume of planes coming and going at the base. Lots of C-54’s bringing men and supplies to the front lines and bringing back wounded soldiers.
On December 11th 1944 Norris’ tour was up and he jumped on a C-54 headed back to the States. After a brief stop in Newfoundland it was on to Washington DC. When he landed he called Dot to let her know he was back and waiting for his orders. His orders came through for Dow Field Hospital in Bangor Maine by way of Greensboro, NC. That gave him a chance to see Dot and his family in Kannapolis.
He and Dot headed to Bangor and by August of ’45 Norris had enough points to get out of the Army, but Uncle Sam thought otherwise and told him he had an essential job and could not leave. They gave him a promotion to Staff Sergeant and a raise in consideration for extending his service. By the end of 1945 with the war in Europe and the Pacific having been won, military operations were shutting down and he was given orders to Greensboro where he was discharged on January 22, 1946.
Norris and Dot found a one room apartment with a shared bathroom and Norris enrolled in Lenoir Rhyne College in the Pre-Dental program. Norris squeezed in a part-time job at the local A&P working as a cashier and also helped out in stocking shelves. He recalled a lot of basic necessities such as soap, canned goods and sugar were still in short supply as the war economy had not yet transitioned back to a civilian economy. He recalled as soon as the products came in the people would swarm into the store and try to buy as many as they could. They would trample the stock boys to get to the shelves and sometimes fights broke out.
Dot found a job at a local manufacturing company but the company began to experience financial difficulties as their war volume declined faster than they could convert to a civilian product line. Concerned layoffs were coming Dot found another job at Spainhour’s Department Store. In the post-war economy automobiles were hard to come by. Eventually the young couple saved $750 to buy a used Chevrolet. They also took advantage of surplus government apartments given to the college and they were able to get a one room apartment that had its own bathroom with a shower. The apartment was heated by a coal stove.
Norris took extra classes and graduated early so he could save some of his GI scholarship to pay for dental school. He applied to several dental schools, but much to his surprise all of the programs were full and most programs were accepting only in-state students. At the time North Carolina did not have any dental schools. He received an offer from The University of Kentucky but they would not be able to take him for three years. Not wanting to begin his career as a dentist at the age of 31, Norris decided to look for a job. Norris found a position in the machine room at Cannon Mills and they also hired Dot as a keypunch operator. Initially Norris was working on various tabulators and early computing machines, but he was quickly moved into the office to help with planning all of the new projects that were made possible by the ever increasing advancements and sophistication of the early computers. It was late 1947 and Norris was making $390/mo.
Life started to return to normal and people were doing the things they had done before the war. The big change was the prevalence of automobiles which made it much easier for people to get together and be social. There was no television so the radio and movies were still the primary means of entertainment. At Christmas they would cut down their own Christmas trees because artificial trees hadn’t been invented. He remembers folks taking lots of photographs.
By 1948 Norris was earning $3,000/yr and was maxing out on his contributions to Social Security. The couple had traded-in their ’41 Chevrolet for a used ’47 Plymouth and bought a 5 room house on a 75’x100’ lot for $5,500 and financed it with a GI FHA loan at 4%.
In 1953 the couple had their first of 4 children. Cannon Mills was growing and turning Kannapolis into a Textile Hub. The company’s computing capabilities were growing also. In 1959 the company purchased its first large scale computer made by Remington Rand which had its own air conditioned room. By 1960 they were running three shifts in the computer room. By 1963 Interstate 85 was completed near Charlotte, NC and the family traded-in their car for a Plymouth station wagon with 7,000 miles. Cannon Mills was still expanding and built a new building that would house a new computer they were purchasing from General Electric which they hoped would make punch cards obsolete.
Life went on and Norris and Dot were active in their church, all four children graduated from college followed by 5 grandchildren and 4 great grandchildren. Norris retired after 40 years of service at Cannon. After he retired he became the local historian for Kannapolis and is known as Mr. History. He and Dot founded the Kannapolis History Associates which led to a history room at the Kannapolis Library.
Dot passed away in February 2016 just two months short of their 74 wedding anniversary.
I asked about the prevailing mood of the country during WWII. He remembers everybody wanting to win the war so they could get back on with their lives. I asked him what he thought of his time in the service. “I had a good time.”
Norris, thank you for your time in the service, your dedication to preserving history and helping to put an end to punch cards.