How my mother came to change her name

Every family probably has stories like this. My father and I thought it was a hoot but my sainted mother had a different view!

My mother was named Doris Agnes Ross. Agnes, her middle name, was chosen out of respect for her aunt, Agnes Ross Davey. How her parents came to choose her first name, Doris, was a mystery to me. And to her as well- no clue how it came to be chosen. But in about 1945 my mother learned Doris wasn't really her birth name.

My parents married in the '30s and I arrived on the scene about 4 years later while we were residents of California. Then in 1942 (I think!) we Bowmans moved to Reno, Nevada. That was just after the start of WW-II and men were disappearing into the Army, Navy and Marine Corps both by volunteering and by being drafted. And yes, the Navy and Marine Corps received some of those draftees during WW-II (the Air Force didn't exist till after WW-II- during WW-II they were the Army Air Corps and were part of the Army). My father was drafted in late 1942 or early 1943 and went off to the US Army for basic training in (I think) Utah. 

These posters were everywhere though I particularly recall the post office
where they stood out against the otherwise naked walls.

So not long after we Bowmans arrived in Reno, Nevada my father received his draft notice: "Greetings from the President of the United States..." Besides being in his 30's, the Army soon discovered my father was blind as a statue without his eye glasses. They sent him home after 6 weeks. He was rejected as unfit for military service and classified as 4F. 

When he was first drafted, however, there was no thought of him being rejected because of his poor eyesight- lots of people in military service wear eye glasses. So without any insight into that future classification, my parents took several steps to deal with the sudden life change-

• I was enrolled in a day care program at the Day Home, and
• my mother applied for a job as a secretary at Bell of Nevada (a subsidiary of AT&T)

So my parents got their war-time ducks in a row quickly and all was good to go when my father left for basic training. 

In 1942 not everyone had a telephone- it was expensive and a person might go weeks without a call. We, however, had a telephone it just seemed 'normal' as my mother's parents ran the telephone exchange in Lockeford, California with switchboards and all the attendant wires installed in their home. My father's name was listed in the phone book but my mother's name was not listed as it cost extra for a second listing. However, all employees at Bell of Nevada were required to have a telephone and each employee had to have their name listed in the phone book for contacting employees in an emergency. 

So when when my mother went to work for Bell of Nevada her name, telephone number and address were listed in the telephone book. But then the extra listing and the base telephone service were free for an employee so no harm done. They did have to pay for long distance calls like everyone else.

Some background: Nevada has a unique culture and among those social oddities during WW-II, prostitution was legal as decided by the residents of each county- the voters of each county chose at that time. For one thing it generated income to the county which lightened tax burdens. Because we were just coming out of the depression, it meant income to the county at a time when people were struggling to survive. Reno is in Washoe County and during WW-II Washoe County chose to allow prostitution. 

I'm ignorant of the details of life as a 'working girl' but because of what happened next I learned that among other things each prostitute was required to register with the Nevada's health department. Each sex worker was required to have a health exam before the permit was issued and in order to maintain that registration she was required to be re-examined periodically. The issue was if the prostitute failed a health exam because of testing positive for venereal disease she lost her permit. And no permit meant she lost her job so no income. But sex workers had a plan.

It was common practice for a prostitute to simply pick up a phone book and look thru for a listed female, copy the name, address and phone number and submit that information on the application as her own identity. Not only did it defeat the health controls, the identity theft created occasional situations for female citizens who of course had no clue what had transpired. And that apparently happened to my mother.

Whoever used my mother's name failed to get re-examined on schedule (or maybe they'd moved), so the state health department sent a letter to Doris A Bowman at 444 St Lawrence St in Reno and told her to report to the health department and explain why she failed to submit proof of re-examination. The real Mrs. Doris Bowman was mortified she'd been identified as a sex worker and was pissed beyond belief that anyone chose her name thanks to Bell of Nevada requiring that she be listed. 

The state health department worker my mother talked to said it happened frequently and to just stop by the office with her identification and a copy of her birth certificate and they would fix the problem. Easy-peasey. Except the real Doris Bowman didn't have a copy of the birth certificate.

So she called the appropriate office in Sacramento, California and ordered a copy of the birth certificate. When it arrived it said (OMG!) her birth name was not Doris Agnes Ross. The document she had received in the mail from the State of California said her name was Delores Agnes Ross.

So my now pretty frustrated mother called her own mother in Lockeford, California to find out what the hell was going on. After a bit of a giggle she learned from her mother that one of the relatives said 3 months-old Delores looked more like a Doris than a Delores. 'Hmm... I think you're right! OK- we'll call her Doris'. But no one changed the birth certificate.

So before she could take her birth certificate to the Nevada health department, she had to contact a lawyer in California (remember it's during WW-II so hopping in a car and driving 137 miles from Reno to Sacramento to fix the problem was out- for one thing there was enough rationed gas available for the trip!). The lawyer had to get a judge to sign off on a request for name change, submit a change request for her birth certificate to be corrected, and order a copy of that revised birth certificate to be mailed to my mother in Reno. So a few months after the fiasco was discovered, my mother was officially Doris and the state of Nevada conceded she was not and never was a prostitute. My father thought the whole thing was hysterical but my mother didn't see anything funny about the whole thing!