When the Pecks married,
Jack was working on a grease rack at Thomas J. Doyle, the largest Dodge-Plymouth
dealership in the world. "Three
of us greased 100 cars a day," Jack said.
Evelyn worked at a theater.
Jack made $80 a month, and Evelyn made $15 a week.
"Our rent was $35 a month, so it didn't leave an awful lot."
"Jobs were hard to get then," Jack recalled.
"1939 was the time of the big sit-down strikes in Detroit,
when the unions were all organized.
Jack worked for his uncle, Russ Richards, in
a gas station at St. Clair Shores, Michigan.
One of the men who brought his automobiles to the station was
a foreman in a machine shop. "I bugged him for a job, and I got a job and went to work
at the machine shop in 1940," Jack said.
"We worked long hours and did pretty well, because I made
about twice as much money as I did working at the gas station.
I was paid 85 cents an hour, and a regular work week was 60 hours.
When the Pecks first married, they lived with
Evelyn's mother for a year. "She
had a duplex - three stories and a basement - and we had the third floor,"
Jack said. "And then
we rented an apartment, and we lived there until Richard was born.
It had a no-children rule, so we had to move then.
William Richard Peck was born June 17, 1941
The family moved into the upstairs part of a bungalow.
"We had a kitchen, bedroom, living room and bath.
And if you wanted hot water, you had to go down in the basement
and light the hot water heater.
An Irish couple, Danny and Sadie O'Brien shared
spaghetti and dancing with the Pecks every Tuesday night when they first
married. "Our entertainment 90 percent of the time was going dancing
on Saturday night," Jack said. His oldest sister, Virginia, usually watched the baby.
In April 1944, Jack went into the Army Air
Corp. "I was in the
pre-cadet program, and they closed it out when VJ was over." he
said. "The last job
I had was as a flight engineer on a B-25."
Jacks time in the service brought him to Waco, where he was stationed
at bases, Waco Army AirField and Blackland Army AirField.
He learned to fly and soloed at Rich Field in Waco, now the site
of the Heart of Texas Fairgrounds.
Evelyn joined Jack in Waco in July 1944. He
was only paid $54 a month from the Army, so he supplemented his income
by working at a machine shop called Grimland Brothers, between Sixth
and Seventh streets on Washington Avenue.
Evelyn worked at Cinderella Shoes and at Bauer-McCann during
that time.
In July 1945, Jack went to Lowry Field in Colorado,
and Evelyn returned to Detroit.
From Lowry, Jack went to Montgomery, Alabama, before being discharged
on Nov. 5, 1945. When Jack returned to Detroit, he found that his job at the
machine shop where he had worked was not available. The Grimland brothers had offered him a job there if he returned
to Waco, so the Peck family moved to Central Texas Jan. 1, 1946.
The job that had originally been offered had been filled, but
Jack took anything he could get. He did set-ups on machines and made $200 a month.
After about six months, he was promoted to
production manager. His
salary jumped to $250 a month and he was given 1 percent of the profits.
He had to supervise a bunch of men in their 50s and 60s, though, and
they weren't too happy about this young man as their boss.
Before long, Jack found himself "demoted", and instead
of offering 1 percent of the profits, the company started paying him
overtime. The Pecks initially
lived in Glenora Courts, north of Waco off Old Dallas Highway, but in
April they bought a house at 1223 LaClede in Bellmead, thanks to the
GI Bill.
