While I was still at the Ration Board, Bill Dillon came to ask if  I would work as secretary and bookkeeper in the quarry company, Dillon and Sharpe.  It was there I learned to crochet because I had to keep the office open in the winter even if they weren't processing rock.  Also, while I was there, in the winter I helped the lawyer next door and some of the lawyers for the railroad. At that time they were relocating the Rock Island railroad through Centerville.  While working days, I worked two nights a week as a volunteer at St. Joseph Hospital as a nurses' aide and helped coach the girls' basketball team.

Both my bosses were named Bill -Bill Dillon and Bill Sharpe - but they were as different as night and day.  Bill Dillon couldn't dictate so he would tell me what he wanted to say and I would write the letters. Bill Sharpe knew exactly what he wanted to say and how he wanted it said.

When Dale and I became engaged, the company was getting ready to move to Columbus Junction, so from the time that Dale returned from service and our wedding, I trained a high school girl, Elahvonne, to take my place.  Trying to help the transition, I said to Bill Sharpe, "Elahvonne is just in high school and can't be expected to take dictation as fast as I."  He tried.  I could hear him as he started slowly but then, as he talked, he got faster and faster.  She came into my office nearly in tears and said she hadn't gotten it all.  I helped her and we got the letter written, but I told her the next time to just tell him to stop.

Dale got out of service in January.  We were married and left immediately for Denver, Colorado on February 17, 1946.  Dale knew he could get a job and applied with Safeway Grocery Chain. We lived in a two-room apartment, which didn't give me much to do.  I had my thank-you notes out of the way and, since I had always worked, I went out and found a job.  Dale didn't
come home for lunch so I took the bus and told him I was going to work.  He wasn't very happy about it but I went to work the next day.

I worked for Colorado Builders and took dictation from the president, vice president and five different salesmen. In between, I filled in at the telephone switchboard, where I made conference calls, etc. Then I was offered a position at more money with War Assets where I was secretary.  I was about to move up as supervisor when Dale got a call about an opening with Hy-Vee and we came back to Iowa.

At this point Dale picks up the story:  I also was born in Centerville on November 3rd 1923.  My parents were Brae Scritchfield and Mary Masters Scritchfield.  They were of German descent.  My father lived to be 97 1/2 my mother nearly 75. She was diabetic, as I am, also.  We lived in the southern part of town and, if money is a measure, I, too, came from a very poor family. I well remember being embarrassed having to go to school in patched overalls.  I thought I was the only one and mentioned it to my mother.  She said, "Don't feel bad.  They are clean. You hold your head up high."

My father had only a 4th grade education but worked for an iron works company owned by a man of the Jewish faith.  I was brought up in the Nazarene church. I remember my father coming home with his $17 a week pay check.  He would sit down on Saturday night and figure 10% of his $17.  He put that aside and when I asked about it, his answer was, "This is the Lord's
money."  All the years I knew my father he always paid the 10% tithe.

Both Erma and I were educated in the Centerville schools, so we pretty much went through the same things, except for grades. I was probably a "b" and "c" student. I clearly remember a situation that came up while I was in high school. To help the family income, Mother took in washings.  A business man in town always had Mother wash his shirts.  One time when he came to pick them up, he noticed a little wrinkle on the collar. He threw the shirt on the floor!  I picked it up, gave it to him and told him, "From now on my mother doesn't do any washing for you!  I will pay her."

At that time I was working at Supply Store owned by Charlie Hyde and Dave Vredenburg. Dwight Vredenburg was store manager. I had been working at an oil station when Mr. Vredenburg wanted to hire me because he thought I'd make a good employee. At the request of the head meat cutter, I went to work in that department. That was where I learned to cut meat - by hand - no electric utensils at that time.  Then Dwight sent me to Shenandoah to learn more about cutting meat.

Mr. Dave Vredenburg came into the store and said, "We need a meat manager at Osceola."  They sent me to the meat market at Hyde’s, which was located in a little place on the south side of the square.  That was in 1942.   Roy Frizzell had been the manager of the store, and, when he went into the Army, Mac McGuire replaced him. I lived in an apartment east of the square, with a very nice lady, Zula Painter, who was Jack and Andy Jeffreys' mother.

I had some choices to make along the way.  My first love was working with wood. I took manual training and loved it.  While I was working at Supply Store, I was offered a job in a furniture factory. Some of the furniture that I had made was on display at the State Fair, and they saw it. But I had discovered that I also loved the grocery business and chose that.

The lives and careers of many fellows about my age were interrupted by military service in the early 1940's.  I enlisted in the Air Force and left Osceola in October of 1942. I was sent to Midland Texas to bombardier school where I discovered that I was color blind. That kept me out of the Cadet Corps.

I went through various trainings all over the United States.  I was given a 30-day furlough when my father broke his foot and that is when I went to the gas rationing office and found Erma. She could only give me five gallons of gas but, more important, that was when I asked her for a date.

Shortly after I returned from my furlough, I was assigned to the 13th Air Force and volunteered for Special Services.  When you are young, you tend to take some daring and dangerous courses. I was sent to the South Pacific in the Special Services division of the Air Force.

I have deliberately chosen to blank my time there out of my memory.  I was stationed in the Philippines, Guam, and New Guinea, where I got malaria. The water was unsanitary and the living conditions horrible. We were on Anguar and Saipan, Pelelieu in the Palau Islands and on Okinawa.

Okinawa was to be the jumping off place for the invasion of Japan.  We could expect to lose 1 1/2 million men; but it was at that time that President Truman ordered the atomic bomb to be dropped. That cost but also saved millions of lives. Japan surrendered.  We were to go to Japan after the bomb was dropped.  They loaded us on LSTs and we got into a terrible typhoon. The water was so rough that trucks, jeeps and artillery washed overboard.  They had to bring us back to Okinawa, where bodies were lying all over the bay area.

One coincidence was that, on a boat next to us, I heard a guy swearing and going on about the storm.  It turned out to be a next door neighbor whom I had gone to school with and we had our own reunion.

We went to Japan after the surrender.  We were at Chof Airbase, Ozaka, just outside Tokyo.  We expected the people to be hostile but they weren't. The emperor had told them to surrender and there was no animosity.  In fact, they were wonderful to us.  They craved chocolate and we had bars of it that we gave to the children. We also supplied cigarettes and other things that were in short supply.

After we were in Japan two months we visited Hiroshima. That was the most awesome thing I had ever seen!  How one bomb could tear up a city was unbelievable. I hope and pray we never have another atomic bomb dropped any place in the world!

When I was ready to be discharged, I had quite a bit of money. All of us would sell cigarettes that we had access to, to the Japanese. I had no way to change the money to American currency. A buddy offered to do that but I didn't trust him.  A Japanese family - a man, his wife and daughter - cleaned our barracks and polished our shoes.  One day I asked the man, "What could you do with this money?" He said, "I could buy a farm"; so I gave it to him. To show their appreciation they invited me to their home.  I ate their food, and they gave me a Japanese flag he had been given for valor in the war in China. He had had his right hand blown off during the fighting.

I often think about the way we fought and killed those people, and they killed us; but when we meet on different grounds we discover they are just like us. They want to live. They have families. The Japanese soldiers whom we killed had family pictures in billfolds just like we did.  War does terrible things!

I had a chance to fly home but I chose to come by boat.  We landed in Tacoma, Washington and a family of eight invited me to their home for Christmas dinner. I came back to Iowa and Erma and I made plans to get married. When I asked Erma's father if l could marry her, he asked if l was sure I could support his daughter. I didn't even have a job.

We were married on February 17, 1946 in the Methodist Church in Centerville by Reverend Greenwood. We had a big church wedding and I was scared to death. It was then I realized, boy! what have I gotten myself into! What a lot of responsibility I was taking on!

I looked up a job with Safeway in Denver.  I will never forget when I went to apply at their headquarters. I said, "I'd love to have a job" and the answer was, "So would seven million others. Why should I hire you?" I said, "I'm a meat cutter"; and he said, "You're hired." So after we were married, we went to Denver, and I went to work for Safeway.

I went to work first at Golden, Colorado.  The manager was in a mess.  He had lost his second man.  The first question he asked was, "Do you know anything about cutting meat?" I said, "I sure do." We filled the meat counter.  I really liked the manager but Safeway needed me elsewhere, so they brought me back to south Denver.  They had nine or ten butchers in that store. Each man had a block.  The first block was the manager, the second the assistant manager.  I was ninth.  The second man notified me that I was to scrape the blocks, apply salt and water to clean them, sweep, and carry out bones.  In other words, I was more or less a janitor.

The following week we got around 15 carcasses of beef and the second man wasn't there, so the meat manager said they would need someone to break them down into quarters and hang them in coolers.  No one else wanted or knew how to do that.  I spent all afternoon cutting the meat in quarters to hang on hooks.  After the meat manager saw what I could do, he told me that I was to take the block next to him. The man who had been his second man was moved down. That gave me the opportunity to tell him what I expected him to do.

Retirement has not ended the Scritchfields' activity.  Dale and Erma have continued a tradition which adds up to 43 years of Dale cutting up 4-10 carcasses of beef for Raymond and Maxine Johnson, and. Raymond's sister Betty and husband Gene Burgus, of Chariton.  This is a family operation that happens each January.  In earlier days Dale cut the meat by hand, now by electric saws and grinders.  Erma wraps it. This year the crew processed five animals on Saturday, six on Sunday.  In appreciation, they give Dale and Erma a hog and some beef   After they had cut those up and had come back home late Sunday afternoon, they had to go to Des Moines to buy another freezer.  Dale recognizes that the boys need to start learning and so he is teaching their sons.

The Burguses are the kind of people who would give the shirts off their backs. They are always willing to lend a hand. In addition to the above, they also give Dale walnut from trees on their farm, which is greatly appreciated; for Dale has never abandoned his love for wood and woodworking that he had as a high school student.  While at the stores, he would often go home and work in his shop until midnight.  Through the years he has made grandfather clocks - of oak for Shirley and of walnut for Dale and Marleta - as well as much of the furniture in their home and many gifts.

Erma's sister, Wauneita, served as pastor of the Russell/Bethel United Methodist churches for 14 years.  During that time she engineered the merger of the Presbyterian and United Methodist congregations and they built a church.  Dale made for them all three of their crosses - one over the front entrance, 4-5' tall; the battered cross above the altar, and the outside cross which is 15' tall made from 4x6 lumber.  That cross was an after-thought.   The contractor would construct it at an estimated cost of over $1,000.  Dale offered to do it if they would pay for the cost of materials.  Agreed.

For the Osceola United Methodist Church, Dale made the manger for the crèche. The wood was a piece of decayed walnut, which he had thought of burning.  However, Erma says, "he keeps everything"; and this was exactly right for the manger.  He has made boxes for the sound equipment, receptacles for bulletins to be recycled, a walnut footstool to enable children to drink from the water fountain and he has just finished a sign to go above United Methodist Women’s bulletin board.  The background is of oak, the letters of walnut.  He is particularly pleased with it because he made it after his loss of sight.

"We have had a full life, have many good friends and acquaintances, three wonderful children: Shirley Ann married to Thomas Kodera, is a Director of Institutional Research and Assessment at Creighton University, Omaha, Nebraska; Dale Eugene, married to Marleta Poore, is a vice-president of a food brokerage in Des Moines, and Roberta Kay.  We do not know where she is but hope that one day she will "see the light."  In the meantime we ask God to take care of her.