William J. "Bill" Rupp, Jr. was born in New Orleans, Louisiana in 1927. It was the same year that Babe Ruth hit 60 homeruns and the Dempsey [Annotator's Note: American boxer William Harrison "Jack" Dempsey] versus Tunney [Annotator's Note: American boxer James Joseph "Gene" Tunney] fight occurred. Those were great events, just like the birth of Rupp. [Annotator's Note: Rupp smiles.] Rupp had a sister named Patricia who was ten years younger than him. He had no other siblings. Rupp's father worked for Henderson Sugar Refinery in New Orleans. He later moved to the American Sugar Refinery in Chalmette and ultimately retired from there. He was employed during the Depression at Henderson Refinery and was glad to have the job. It was menial work but provided an income. Rupp witnessed a lot of penny pinching during those days. A penny meant a lot. Returning bottles to collect the deposit was worth doing. For entertainment, Rupp spent much of his time in outdoor sports. He enjoyed marbles and other sports. New Orleans was full of politicians during those days. The longer a politician stayed in office, the worse his character became. It is a shame because the people of New Orleans are good folks. They are very generous, kind, and sharing. Rupp remembers the carnival parades where floats were pulled by mules. There were cotton warehouses on the wharfs along the Mississippi River. There was an oyster wharf that was multi-level. It would receive the oysters from the boats returning from the gulf. Truckers could pick up the oysters off the boats in the river no matter how high the water was. Storage was in iced warehouses on Esplanade. There were different baseball leagues at the time. Companies sponsored competitive teams. The CYOs [Annotator's Note: Catholic Youth Organization] also had teams. Each parish supported basketball and baseball teams. With the limited means of personal transportation, people traveled by streetcar to their game day destinations. The money was raised for the good of the church. People seemed to get along better during those times. They knew how to "love your fellow man." That attitude has turned around over the years. Rupp was 14 years old when he heard of the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor in 1941. A lady heard the announcement on her radio and shouted the news out to the neighborhood. Rupp had never heard of Pearl Harbor before. He learned it was a main Navy base in Honolulu, Hawaii. He felt he would never get in the war because he was just a sophomore in high school. Time went by and, at 17 years of age, he got his parents to sign for him to join the Navy. Many of his friends had previously enlisted in the Navy. He did not like the idea of being in the Army with all the walking the soldiers had to do. The war brought on many jobs. Many of the younger men had become servicemen. Some enlisted and some were drafted. Most went into the service on their own initiative. Rupp got out of high school in 1944. He graduated from Francis T. Nichols High School. They were the Nichols "Rebels." It was a new school and the first coed school in New Orleans. There were different types of shops at the school to train individuals who did not want to take college level classes. A person could learn woodwork, sheetmetal, electricity, or other trades. A student could devote an hour or two a day of his class time to learn a trade. It provided a taste of what life as a tradesman would be like.

William Rupp decided to sign on to work with the Hendy Corporation with a neighborhood friend. The company operated tug boats in the Gulf [Annotator's Note: Gulf of Mexico]. The boys joined as deckhands. Rupp was just 17 years old at the time. They ran to and from the Harvey Canal transporting dredges for refurbishment. They would pull the dredges down the Intercoastal Waterway to Florida. The Waterway was under construction at that time. The dredges would be brought from the dredging site to the Harvey Canal where they were repaired. Rupp made one trip and decided that was enough for him. He went to Consolidated-Vultee on Lake Pontchartrain. He worked on PBY [Annotator's Note: Consolidated PBY Catalina flying boat] flying boats that were mainly used for patrolling the Pacific. That was where the island hopping occurred. Rupp worked in a riveting crew fabricating the exterior of the airplanes. After working there for about two months, he heard of openings at Higgins Industries. Some of his friends who worked there told Rupp of the openings for office workers. He applied and was hired for the facility on City Park Avenue. His first assignment there was in the Inventory Department. He was responsible for processing material tickets signed by individuals withdrawing materials from inventory. Those items were used on the various vessels such as landing craft, PT boats, and so forth that were being built. He had to log in the details of the withdrawal so that they could be turned in upstairs. The tickets were the basis for inventory control using the minimum and maximum material quantity approach. If the supply of a particular material item reached the minimum quantity, the Purchasing Department had to reorder it to bring the amount of the item to the maximum quantity level. It was a repetitive action on each type of material based on its consumption. Rupp enjoyed working with Higgins. When the company sought someone who could drive an automobile, Rupp acknowledged that he could. He had driven the family automobile for years after his father purchased one but disliked driving it. Rupp learned to drive early in high school. He was one of the few students who had an automobile. Rupp's ability to drive landed him a position in the Comptrollers Department. He assisted the cashiers in the office. His main job involved obtaining a company car from the Higgins motor pool in New Orleans in order to transact various business activities in the city. He would drive to the post office and pick up the mail. He would transfer the bags to another location where it would be sorted and distributed. He then visited the various Higgins locations to collect and then deposit money from the plants to the financial institutions that the company worked with downtown. He also picked up blank war bonds for allocation by the Accounting Department to Higgins employees at multiple company facilities. The bonds were purchased by participating employees through payroll deductions. Rupp worked in the offices during the afternoon and made a final mail run to the post office late in the day. On special evenings, he and a couple coworkers had to wear black pants, white shirt, and linoleum-type bow tie to show movies to visiting dignitaries at the Andrew Higgins' home on Prytania Street. The individuals were given meals and enjoyed a movie. Those political dignitaries often inspected the Higgins plants and received the free meal in the process. After the movie ran, Rupp and his coworkers would be dismissed from their job. He and the other workers would retire to the kitchen and be given a very good meal to end the evening. It was not bad duty since he was paid time and a half for his work. Those were the responsibilities that Rupp had while working at Higgins.

William Rupp felt it was time to go into the Navy just before he reached 18 years of age. He told his parents that he wanted their approval for his enlistment. They approved and he joined the Navy at the old Custom House on Canal Street [Annotator's Note: in New Orleans, Louisiana]. He was sworn in and just waiting to be called when he came down with a viral infection that could not be identified. He was being treated at home when the Navy called him to go. Rupp was feverish and could not go. The Navy sent a commander with a corpsman to check on him. Rupp was told that if his fever did not break within two days, he would be sent to the Navy hospital at the Lakefront [Annotator's Note: adjacent to Lake Pontchartrain in New Orleans]. The fever did break and Rupp notified the Navy that he was ready to go. Shortly afterward, he was on his way to San Diego. Rupp had volunteered in February 1945, but he did not actually go into service until 1 June 1945. He was just a kid like most of the others in the service. Prior to enlistment, Rupp had been following the war closely by listening to the radio. He became familiar with the geography of the Pacific and Europe. While he worked for Higgins Industries, he had some direct contact with Mr. Higgins [Annotator's Note: Andrew Jackson Higgins owned Higgins Industries in New Orleans]. Higgins was a very open, robust and friendly man. He had a red face and could be stern. Rupp personally witnessed his irritation while he was in the office near Higgins. While in the Navy training camps, Rupp thought he was being groomed to be a corpsman. After returning from his boot leave, he was placed in a huge barrack awaiting his assignment to the Atlantic or Pacific. Rupp found himself to be the last man in a two story barracks. He had the building to himself the last few nights he spent there. His name finally appeared on the bulletin board. He was assigned to the IBM [Annotator's Note: International Business Machines] school. He learned to maintain and operate IBM machines. He transited from San Diego via cattle car to his destination, San Francisco. His duty station was Treasure Island in the middle of San Francisco Bay. Ships were received there. He was on Yerba Buena Island in near proximity to the prison [Annotator's Note: Alcatraz Prison]. He knew he had to be good or he might be sent there. [Annotator's Note: Rupp smiles.] Rupp had never left home prior to going to boot camp in San Diego. He had talked to enough of his friends who had gone before him so he knew basically what to expect. He knew never to volunteer except for the manning of a lifeboat. That was particularly true if a person had operated a boat or skiff or other marine vessel. That experience would result in the person being the individual who steered the boat rather than one of the rowers who pulled the oars. Rupp knew how to use his head sometimes. A person was treated decently in training unless he was a smart aleck. When told not to do something, the trainee had to take the warning. One man continually saluted a chief despite being told not to do so. The chief reminded the trainee that he did not need to salute men of his rank. When the individual refused to learn that lesson, the chief decided to drop him from his company. The guilty trainee was then assigned to a different group of trainees. It was a hard lesson for the individual to learn. Luckily, Rupp did not have to serve overseas. He was kept home for all the good looking girls. Rupp enjoyed the physical parts of his boot camp training. That was a discriminator between individuals. Some had little normal outdoor experience exercising their muscles. Some could not swim, climb a rope, or walk the overhead monkey bars hand-over-hand. Some men were challenged with being overweight. The drill instructors were tolerant and kept pushing the trainees to get to the goals. They were not acceptant of those who did not expend proper effort. During one session that involved swimming across a pool, some trainees had difficulties. Rupp was not one of them. He had enjoyed swimming since he was a child. He and two other men from New Orleans were buddies. They spent off time together at the canteen. They all knew how to swim. There were city pools and the beach at Lake Pontchartrain. They requested that the instructor let those struggling in front of them get a good lead across the pool. They wanted to swim without the unskilled swimmers interfering with them. The New Orleans boys managed to swim without being batted around by those who were foundering in the water. Rupp learned a lot in the Navy about personal care, responsibilities and accountability. He learned many life lessons that he applied throughout his life. At the end of his boot camp training, the men had to fill out a questionnaire about their previous experiences in life. The answers determined their next assignment in the Navy. Rupp has no idea why he ended up in IBM. He was glad to get home on his one week boot leave after boot camp. He had to return to Treasure Island after the leave. While on Treasure Island, he received another leave that was coincidental with Mardi Gras so that was two pluses. Some of his friends were also on leave at that time. They went downtown and really enjoyed themselves. They "passed a good time" as they say in New Orleans and out in the nearby country. At 18 years of age, he was a big turkey. He was in the Navy and he could pick a good one [Annotator's Note: presumably a female]. He did find a good one. Rupp decided on the Navy because of his family experiences near and on the water. They knew how to handle boats. He enjoyed fishing and just being out on the water. He was bosun material but he ended up in IBM.

William Rupp was trained to maintain, repair, and operate IBM machines by the Navy. He also attended night school classes offered by IBM on their machines. He learned about how information on punch cards was transferred to print-out documents. It is all accomplished via the way a board is wired. Through a series of informational transfers, the data on a card tells a printer what to output in print. Rupp was involved with personnel information collection and use for future duty assignments. Transportation and barrack allocations were made using the IBM machines. The IBMs were the computer of the day. Rupp had completed boot camp when the atomic bombs were dropped. He was relieved that a normal life would be possible afterward. One of his friends in the Marines had been killed. Another friend lost his eye. Most of the dozen or so friends in his crowd came back without injury. The atomic bomb and the Manhattan Project was a complete secret. No one knew about it at the time it was sprung on the Japanese. It was deserved after what had happened at Pearl Harbor and for the Pacific atrocities the Japanese were guilty of perpetrating. The Germans should have had a taste of it too. It was good that normal life would be possible and men could go back to school. The existence of the German concentration camps was not known until the Allies and Russians liberated those camps. The inmates were incarcerated for no reason other than they were guilty of being Jews or individuals that the Nazis did not approve of. The cruelty remains unbelievable. Many guilty Germans were never taken to trial for their misdeeds. Less than one tenth of the guilty ever went to court. There were enlisted men and sergeants who never had to pay the price for their actions. Only a few "stretched the rope." It did not take the discovery of the camps to motivate the military. After Pearl Harbor, the servicemen knew why they were in the fight. No one ran to Canada. It was a different time. After the surrender, Rupp and his fellows at Treasure Island were locked up in their camp. There was too much wild revelry that was heard about over the radio. The officers were worried about releasing the men to celebrate. Some men did not return to other camps for days afterward. The service people were given free drinks in the bars. Rupp had a few beers after he got out because he was under 21 years old. He would sneak a couple of cold ones at the bar near the train station when he was headed out on leave. The bartender would cut him off after two beers. People were so nice. The USOs [Annotator's Note: United Service Organizations] were fun. There were fun parties. Rupp made the USO in Hollywood, but he went in the day time. The best time to go was at night when the movie stars were there. The San Francisco Stage Door Canteen was fun, too. Other Allied troops from England, China and Norway could be seen there when they took time out from their training. Ladies were there to dance with the men in uniform. There was a German prisoner of war camp on Treasure Island. The prisoners would be out in the cold in their shorts doing physical exercise. They looked like the Rockettes chorus line. It could be seen when they goose-stepped. They were very clean people. They washed their clothes often. Marines guarded the prison camp. Rupp felt no animosity toward the enemy until he learned after the war about the atrocities the Japanese and Germans had committed. Rupp remained in service for one year. He was discharged at Treasure Island on 1 June 1946 as a Specialist (I) 3rd Class. That is written as SP (I)3c. The one year of service allowed him to take advantage of many benefits offered to veterans. He was offered a promotion to stay in, but he was ready to get back to civilian life. He was the sole survivor for his mother and sister. His father and mother were separated. Rupp made a practice of sending most of his pay home for them after each pay period.

William Rupp used the G.I. Bill to attend Tulane University. He used the benefits to aid him in business and also to buy his first home. It was beneficial. The life insurance benefit was good and he kept it. It turned out that many men dropped the benefit. There were dividends given out at the end of the year. The pot of money was so large that those who stayed with the insurance received more money back than they were paying for premiums. While at the university, Rupp majored in Business courses. He took Economics and English. He attended for three years going to day and night classes. When he married, it turned into too much for him. His first job out of the Navy was with the Pullman Company that manufactured sleeping cars for railroad transport. He worked later as a rate clerk with the L & M Railroads. He took a position afterward with Colonial Sugar to replace a Traffic Manager about to retire. Rupp was familiar with tariff systems and working with the Interstate Commerce Commission. When a job relocation was required, Rupp moved to a chemical company which eventually became Standard Oil of California and later Chevron. He spent 30 years with them and retired in 1984. That was 30 years prior to the interview. Time has been good to him. His career started in the transportation side of the oil business with Chevron. He considered seeking other employment when he was asked to move to Atlanta. With his family situation, he wanted to remain in New Orleans. A friend in the Chevron Chemical side of the company asked him to handle sales for the state of Louisiana while being based in New Orleans. Rupp knew nothing about that side of the business, but he took the job. He learned quickly and advanced in position. Five years later, he was State Treasurer for Louisiana Chemical Association. He got very involved and made it to retirement successfully.

William Rupp felt there were no particularly memorable experiences during World War 2 for him. He showed up and did his job every morning and had fun at night. There was nothing spectacular. He had no special girlfriends. He found the girl of his life right around the corner from him in New Orleans. He met her at a CYO [Annotator's Note: Catholic Youth Organization] dance. Five years later in 1950, they were married. She passed away in 1988. With the job market flooded by returning veterans, Rupp ended up in transportation because of his experience with IBM [Annotator's Note: International Business Machines]. He enjoyed every minute of his career. In 1968, he was President of the Traffic [Annotator's Note: inaudible] of New Orleans with 1,600 members. That was when he was with Chevron. He enjoyed the Navy and his career. He has a large family that he is very proud of. There was even one more on the way. Rupp served in World War 2 because of his patriotic duty and because he would have been drafted anyway. He did not want to do all that walking [Annotator's Note: in the Army infantry]. The military taught him to be regimented, organized and assess priorities. Rupp is proud of his service but wishes he could have done more. Nevertheless, he is glad it is over. Events in the world today are very scary. North Korea is an example. World War 2 made the country a leader financially and in innovation. Americans are people of their word. A handshake in business means a commitment. Rupp has been blessed with the things the good Lord has given him in career and family. He has not been disappointed. He hopes to be around to help anyway he can. The National WWII Museum helps the public remember what happened. The artifacts in the collection are important. It is gratifying to see the step by step growth of the Museum. The Boeing Center with the aircraft in the overhead is impressive. The PT-305 restoration is a good thing. Rupp has ridden the boat. The lake [Annotator's Note: Lake Pontchartrain] was rough but the man handling the boat prevented any water from getting on the riders. He was on PT-305 and other PT boats being built at City Park Avenue during the war. They would be sent out for shakedown cruises on the Lake or for delivery via flatcar elsewhere. Mr. Higgins' [Annotator's Note: Andrew Jackson Higgins was the owner of Higgins Industries] boat is a wonder vessel. He started with a small propeller repair shop and went to building large quantities of the boats. Mr. Higgins was a fair guy. He told everyone hello.