Becky and Dad
Rebecca Burns Hoffman interviews her father · Mississippi, growing up, and a life in the air
This recording is a family oral history: Rebecca Burns Hoffman — Bob's daughter and the youngest of his children — interviewing her father about his early life in Mississippi. Bob talks about growing up in the rural South during the Depression, the skills and chores of farm life, his family, his schooling, and the world he came from before the Army Air Corps changed everything.
Where the Nick Clooney interview covers Bob's military career, this recording covers what came before it: the Mississippi of the 1920s and 1930s, hog butchering in November cold fronts, repairing Model T chassis in the yard, and the texture of a rural childhood that shaped the man who would eventually fly B-17s over Germany. The two recordings together form a portrait of a complete life.
The recording runs approximately 28 minutes. Becky conducted the interview; both voices are present throughout.