Protesting before protesting was cool....

It was 1957 in the fall. The word had come
down thru the ranks, that President Eisenhower
was going to be staying on the base for a week.

I was working for the Naval Exchange in the office.
We were all abuzz about the day of arrival of the
President. We all wanted to go and watch him
arrive. We all brought in camera's. I had my
Brownie.

Then the word came down from our higher office.
No one was to leave the office at 10am. The arrival
time of the President. We asked if we could use
our lunch time for it. Answer was no.

Then someone mention, we should all go in unit.
What were they going to do, fire the whole office?
There was 12 of us between the two departments.

Believe it or not... 11 of us agreed, that we would
walk out at 10 to 10 am. We would come back at
10:20. When the hour came, we all raised up and
headed for the door. The hold out saw we were
actually going to do it, so she joined us as well.

We were so excited as he came up the road at
10:10. We took pictures. and ran back as fast
as we could in heels, to arrive at our desk at
10:21am. The Supervisors came in the back door.
As they figured if we were going to go, so would they.

We all brought in our pictures the following week.
Were we excited... well, I can tell you, all I got was
a picture of the grill, a picture of the front with the
flags, and then some black pictures, I would guess
it was the black limo as it went by. Some actually got
a picture of the window, that was blacken.

I did see him hitting golf balls out on the lawn,
as I came to work. I waved and he waved back. There
was at least 8 men around him in black.

The office was quiet about the walk out. I don't know if
any of the others had marks against their valuation that
year or not. I got fired, so I didn't get anything.
But it was pretty brave of us. We never heard of people
walking out except union workers. So we could have
lost our job. I remember running with the girls, and being
scared to death how I would explain this to my folks, if I
got fired.