Lora E. Daniel was born August 1917 in Florence, Alabama. She was the youngest of five children. They farmed and she picked cotton. She had two sisters and two brothers. She finished high school and married. Growing up, she took care of the farm with all of her siblings. They all married and left. Daniel even did the boys' work after that. The Great Depression [Annotator's Note: The Great Depression, a global economic depression that lasted from 1929 through 1945] was all around them, but they always had plenty. They had a car and a tractor which their neighbors did not have. She began school at six years old. She finished at 16. The school was about 12 miles away and she rode a bus. [Annotator's Note: The interviewer asks Daniel if she remembers where she was when she heard about the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor, Hawaii on 7 December 1941.] She must have been at home. Her dad was very educated and was really interested. They had a radio and kept up with the news. They learned from him. Daniel left the farm when she married. Her husband got a job at Union Carbide [Annotator's Note: Union Carbide Metallurgical Plant in Sheffield, Alabama], and they got a house. They wanted women to work, and she got a job after having a daughter. They worked shift work together for a long time.

Lora E. Daniel's husband worked at Union Carbide [Annotator's Note: Union Carbide Metallurgical Plant in Sheffield, Alabama] and they told him they were looking for women to work there. Daniel did not want to work in the plant and got a job in the lab. They worked together until the war was over. The men came back and took the women's jobs. When the metal would cool, a piece would be brought to the lab. She would weigh the metal to see if it was good enough to use in war production. The training she was given was mostly day-by-day experience. There was not much schooling other than on the job training. The work was interesting and easy. She enjoyed it. She hated being away from her daughter who her mother took care of. She and her husband lived in a neighborhood that was okay. TVA [Annotator's Note: Tennessee Valley Authority] was building houses for workers like them. They were nice houses. They got along fine with their neighbors. She had a lot of relatives there. They traveled together. They went to Huntsville [Annotator's Note: Huntsville, Alabama] to look at all of the war stuff. The first monkey named "Miss Baker" [Annotator's Note: a squirrel monkey; went into space 28 May 1959] was trained for space there. Daniel saw her. She went and visited her tombstone later [Annotator's Note: on the grounds of U.S. Space & Rocket Center in Huntsville, Alabama].

Lora E. Daniel knew what was going on with the war, but her life was so busy that she probably did not think about it as much as she should have. She had a television by then and was sorry about it. Deep down she did not realize how bad it was. None of her family went to war. Her husband was number one in the draft, but anyone with health issues was not selected. She kept up the best she could with what was going on. Some people were returned dead. She had to go on with her life. She had a cousin killed but his body did not come back. They used to get silk stockings and they now had to get rayon stockings under rationing. She did not like them. They always had enough food and they never wanted for anything they could not get. Daniel liked President Roosevelt [Annotator's Note: Franklin Delano Roosevelt, 32nd President of the United States] and she has his picture at home. Daniel did not like the Nazis at all. She has been to Europe where that all happened. She had strong feelings against the Japanese too. She hated the killing of a lot of Japanese by the atomic bombs [Annotator's Note: nuclear weapons dropped on Hiroshima, Japan on 6 August 1945 and Nagasaki, Japan on 9 August 1945], but she felt the United States had to do what it had to do. It was bad though.

Lora E. Daniel read a lot about the celebrations of V-E Day [Annotator's Note: Victory in Europe Day, 8 May 1945] and V-J Day [Annotator's Note: Victory Over Japan Day, 15 August 1945], but her family did not have that. They just talked about it together and were happy. The family lived not too far apart. She does not think the war affected her life too much. She just lived day-by-day. It did not change her life. Daniel's most memorable experience happened in the plant [Annotator's Note: Union Carbide Metallurgical Plant in Sheffield, Alabama]. She was working in the lab, and a man got caught in the machine that wrapped the hot metal. He was killed. That affected her a lot. It was horrible. Daniel feels the country would be different if the war had not occurred.

Working with the girls in the lab [Annotator's Note: at the Union Carbide Metallurgical Plant in Sheffield, Alabama], Lora E. Daniel thought her life was pretty good at that time. Some of the men liked the women. It was all good and everything was pleasant. There were not many of them in lab in Sheffield, Alabama. It was little. They had to take water from the river [Annotator's Note: the Mississippi River] into a water plant. She had to go every day and dip up the boiling water. If she had fallen in, they would have never known. They analyzed the water and wrote down their findings. They were making the water pure for the plant. She had to straddle something and would think "oh boy, they would never know where I went" [Annotator's Note: if she fell in]. She felt that she was contributing to the war effort and was doing an important job.

When the war was over, Lora E. Daniel's job [Annotator's Note: at the Union Carbide Metallurgical Plant in Sheffield, Alabama] was taken over by Estes Koontz [Annotator's Note: phonetic spelling; unable to verify identity]. Her boss liked her, and she was the last woman left there. Estes worked a few days a week and Daniel left. Men came back and took over the women's jobs. She was glad to get back home to her daughter. Her husband worked with her most of the time. He worked in a shop. He was a handsome man. She went to work at a new Sears [Annotator's Note: Sears Roebuck and Co.] store as a manager of linens and towels. She was asked if a big manager was coming in the store as well as a woman "like coal oil," which meant someone of low worth, which one would she wait on first. She replied she would go to the woman, and they hired her. She worked there for 32 years. She still goes to Sears because she still gets discounts. She was looked up to and got gold pins for her work.