Washington D.C.    1939

While I enjoyed my work at the P.W.A very much I knew that the work was only temporary in nature and would likely end within a year or so. I therefore started looking around for another job. I heard that the Interstate Commerce Commission was looking for investigators and as this was a permanent civil service agency, I thought that it would be well to try and transfer to it. After much negotiation and red tape I arranged the transfer to take effect in September of 1939.

In the meantime I had worked my way up at the P.W.A. where I was reviewing other agents work rather than actually doing the investigations. They had a big scandle down in Lousiana, all tied up with Senator Huey Long and his brother, so they pulled their best agents out of their Fort Worth office and sent them to New Orleans. I was sent down to Fort Worth about the middle of July to do reviewing work until the Lousiana investigations were completed. I stayed until the first of September when I came back and resigned from P.W.A. to accept my new job with the I.C.C. My stay in Fort Worth was a very interesting experience but a really hot one. Because of this experience and the reviewing work I had done in Washington I was told that if I would stay with P.W.A. I would receive a promotion which would pay me substantially more than I would make at the I.C.C. Security seemed much more important then than money and so I turned it down for a good civil service job at much less money.

LETTERS
--------------------------------------------------
(L390204) Dorothy Griffin to Maud Griffin / Washington D.C.
(L390408) John Griffin to Mother / Arlington, VA
(L390426) John Griffin to Father / Arlington, VA
(L390720) John Griffin to Father / Washington D.C.
(L390910) John and Dorothy to the Griffins / Arlington, VA
(L390910A) Dorothy Griffin to the Griffins, Arlington, VA

We decided to go over to Ocean City, Maryland for a few days before I went to work with the I.C.C. The Ross's (Roy and Florence, now of Richfield, Utah) went with us and we had a real good time together on the beach and playing "hearts" in the evening. Bob was just two years old at this time and I tried to get him used to water. He was scared to death of the ocean and wouldn't go near the water. It interesting to note here that Bob later became a champion swimmer winning many many ribbons and medals in swim meets and winning his letter on the Stanford swim team in his freshman year.

It was while we were over at Ocean City, Maryland that the Germans invaded Poland and World War II commenced. I'll never forget the ugly headlines announcing the invasion of Poland and England's quick declaration of war against Germany. As ugly as it all seemed at that time we little realized how vitally those events would affect our lives in the future.


YEAR (FILE ) SUBJECT
---- ------- ---------------------------------
1939 (5001) New York World's Fair Ticket
1939 (5003) Golden Gate Exposition Ticket
1939 (5008) National Theater Playbill

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