Lilia Ramos King High Remembers

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Walker

Chase Walker

Jacob Hayes

Kim Newbrander

Corona

Per.1 U.S. History

3/25/15

Lilia Ramos King High Remembers

Lilia Ramos, madden name Gonzalez, is a first generation Mexican American. She was born on June 14, 1962 to immigrant parents in East LA.They always told her, “Its nice if you finish high school.” She would end up being the only one of her four siblings to finish high school. By the time she was ready to graduate, she did not like the future she thought was before her. Ramos said that she had no clue what college was about. She thought that you needed to have money and that you needed to know what your degree was going to be. She also did not want to be flipping burgers for the rest of her life. When a couple of her friend’s boyfriends joined the military, Lilia and her friends decided to join as well. So on August 1, 1980 Lilia Ramos joined the Navy.

Ramos and her best friend in high school were sent to 8 weeks of boot camp in Orlando, Florida. She had no idea what she was getting into and she recalls felling scared as hell, but proud and that she knew it was the right choice. She said the experience of being in Florida as being extremely humid. Having grown up in Southern California, she had never experienced humidity like that. She also remembered that Florida had the largest water bugs that she had ever seen. After boot camp her friend was shipped off. However, Lilia stayed because of the slow assigning process for the recruits. After two weeks, she started to become nervous because she still had no idea where she was going. Finally there were ten recruits left and they all got the same orders: to go to Adak, Alaska. However, before they could get sent out they had to go to a fire fighting school on Treasure Island in San Francisco.

Treasure Island is an island just off of the Bay Bridge. She said that it was a scary place, because it was also a psychiatric hospital where they kept all of the military personnel with mental issues like PTSD. One of the memories that always stuck with her was that while on the island she was told that if she was assaulted that she should yell “fire” instead of “help”. This was because if you yell help people tend to not do anything, but if you yell fire people are nosey and want to know where the fire is. Also a fire is more urgent and people will be quicker to put it out. While going through firefighting school, she and the other recruits learned how to fight a shipboard fire which she considered strange because they were not assigned to be on a ship. After a couple of months, she was shipped to Adak,Alaska on Christmas Day, 1980.

Once her plane landed in Anchorage she had to board another plane to get to Adak. She recalled that that was the scariest plane ride she had ever been on. She said that the plane was an old twin-engine plane that looked like it had been left over from World War Two. Once she landed in Adak it was snowing.It was the first time she had ever seen snow. She said that they would frequently get what are called” white outs”, where there is so much snow fall that you can not go outside because it is too dangerous. When they had bad weather that there were tunnels underground to go to each of the different buildings so you did not have to walk outside. She said that if you were ever to go out hiking that you should never do it alone because there were these pits that were so deep that if you were to fall into one they would never find you. She remembers that she used to see jets flying over the island but no one ever really knew if they were friendly or enemy planes because they were so close to Russian waters. She said that for good luck, she would always carry a card of Saint Michael and a religious medallion. She remembers having to face discrimination because she was a woman and a minority. For entertainment, she said they would often hunt, play billiards, read books, and dance at the club that was on base. She said that because the island was used in WWII, a lot of their equipment was left over from WWII and the Korean War.

When she got to Adak, she did not have an MSO or a job description; she was just considered a seaman; therefore, they could stick her in any job that was available.Even though she had gone to firefighting school she ended up working in the library for six months. There were several branches of the military stationed on Adak: the Marine Corp, the Coastguard, the Navy, and the Construction Battalion Navy. The Construction Battalion Navy is assigned to mostly construction plumbing and electrical work for the Navy. After befriending a few of the petty officers on the See Bee’s, Ramos tried to change her MSO to See Bee’s; however, she was unable to do this. She ended up leaving her job at the library after having an emergency appendectomy.

When Ramos recovered she was sent to work in the post office. “They got some crazy people who work at the post office,” Her supervisor, who had been in the military for about 15 to 20 years, had a favorite coffee mug. The mug looked totally black inside from years of use. One day Ramos was cleaning up and proceeded to clean the supervisors coffee mug. However, soon after cleaning the inside of the mug from pitch black to good as new again, she learned that “You don’t wash out an old Navy guy’s coffee mug.” She recalls that the repercussions were quite severe and it was in her words, the most horrific thing she had ever done.

After Ramos left Adak, she was transferred to San Diego where she worked in the boat pool. She became a coxswain, whose job was to drive the 40 ft. U-boats. “I loved driving boats,” Ramos remarked. As a coxswain, she would transport personnel from the big ships to the docks. However as much as she loved driving boats, she did not feel as though that was the job for her. She ended up finding her niche working as a yeomen (administrative secretary). During this time she met her husband, Manuel Ramos, who served in the Navy for 22 years. She said that she actually had to ask permission to get married because they were both still in the service at the time.

Lilia Ramos ended up leaving the service to take care of her newborn child. She was about to sign a renewal contract to go to Australia on the condition that she was able to take her child with her,but that turned out to be false.She let her contract expire and spent her last year in the reserves. She said that she was sad to leave but it had to be done. She had served in the military from 1980 to 1986 and left as an E5 yeoman second-class petty officer. While in the military she was awarded many medals such as: the good conduct medal, and both the Navy and Coastguard meritorious unit commendation medals

After leaving the military, she perused her Associate’s Degree in healthcare Management. Her education was not covered on the GI bill. She is currently a member of the veterans, military members and families group group at the University of California Riverside. This group supports vets and family members of vets who are faculty, staff, and students. She said that being in the military definitely had a positive effect on her life and if she had to do it again she absolutely would.