“We picked a lot of cotton back then,” Fleming said. “There was some corn, but they didn’t grow any soybeans like they do now.”

World War II interrupts romance

Fleming said he met the woman who would become his wife while living in Checotah. But World War II came along and it would be several years before they were married.

Fleming said he never fought in the war. He was reclassified after a man who worked at the McIntosh County Election Board told the Selective Service Board that Fleming was needed to work in the fields at home.

Mamie Mitchell moved to California and joined the war effort as World War II spread into the Pacific Theater.

“I used to be a welder at the Kaiser Shipyards in Richmond,” Mamie Fleming said, recalling how she had to show her sugar card to prove she was old enough to work there. “I had to go to school for two weeks. The instructor told me I was so dumb I would never learn anything, but in three days out there in that shipyard I became a certified welder.”

Fleming said she thinks the instructor gave her a rough time “because I wouldn’t flirt with him.”

Fleming said she didn’t care much for California, so after working a while at the Richmond, Calif., shipyard, she took the opportunity to move back home after landing an assignment at the Ammunition Depot outside McAlester. She later worked at Camp Gruber.

After the war effort wound down, the military jobs were gone, and the Flemings were married April 8, 1946.

Tough times made couple self-reliant

The Flemings’ experience of growing up during the 1930s and World War II gave them a keen sense of self-reliance. Both of them learned how to make do with less.

That knowledge and those skills came in handy. Mamie Fleming became quite handy quilting.

“I can’t do it any more because I don’t see so good anymore,” she said.