"How is school since vacation? We surely had a cold spell didn’t we? But it is warmer to-day. Mildred started to defense school at Wichita yesterday morning. She is taking riveting and will probably get a job at one of the defense plants as soon as she is capable."
-- Postcard from my grandmother, Jessie Maybelle (Berger) Brown, age 44, in Bloomington, Kans., to my father, Sidney DeVere Brown, 16, at Southwestern College, Winfield, Kans., Sunday, January 11, 1942.
-- Mildred King, 21, was my dad’s cousin. The United States had entered World War II about a month before this postcard was written. During World War II, 6 million women entered the workforce. By 1944, 40% of workers in the aircraft industry were women, with Wichita as one of the nation's major centers of aircraft manufacturing. (Sources: George Brown Tindall and David Shi, America: A Narrative History (1992), vol. 2, p. 1182; "Wichita, Kansas" in Wikipedia.)
Fred, this reminds me of my grandmother London's letters to us as kids sent from Punxsutawney, PA. She always wrote "to-day" like that too, and always enclosed a small tube of Lifesavers in the letter. Letter writing is a lost art. My father also recently told me stories I had not heard before about his father during the war. Grandpa Buhite helped his father run a dairy farm near Panic, PA when the war broke out. He took the physical to enlist but failed for medical reasons. So, my grandfather, grandmother and my 4 year old father moved to the Cleveland, OH area where he worked in defense plants, long hours. My father, who has an incredible memory, still recalls the apartment in Chardon, OH. One day, as my grandfather was coming back home from work he saw a farmer in the field struggling to get his work done on his own. My grandfather introduced himself and offered to help with the "chores" around the farm for free. Using his farming experience, Grandpa Buhite worked a second job for nothing. I think that he must have been embarrassed that he could not serve as he never spoke to the grandchildren about these times. I am convinced though that, like the Rosie the Riveters, he worked his ass off and contributed mightily to the war effort. When he returned to the farm after the war, his mother and father worked him mercilessly and paid his nothing but room and board. People forget that the women working during WWII really paved the way for women in the workforce during the following decades even though they were discriminated against in terms of both pay and treatment. Thanks for sharing Fred.
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