When we got married we lived in Parkchester and I got a job at Macy’s. Right after Pearl Harbor, Barney came home after work and he said, “I enlisted.” I said, “OK.” What else could I say?

He volunteered earlier that day for the Navy. His boss at the Daily News wrote a letter to the boxer, Gene Tunney, recommending Barney for his outfit. They called them the “Tunney Fish.” Barney was stationed in Bainbridge, Maryland and he’d come home every weekend. He was never sent overseas.

Meanwhile, I’d have a lot of fun with my girlfriends. I had a girlfriend, Natalie, she was divorced, and we’d go hang out at the Chester House, a bar in Parkchester. One night, we met some sailors at a bar in Manhattan and they wanted corn on the cob, so we invited them up to my apartment and I cooked up a pot of corn on the cob!

When the war was over, Barney came home to Parkchester for good. The doorbell rang, and there he was, in uniform, holding his duffel bag—and I slammed the door in his face! I wasn’t ready for him to come home—I was having too much fun!