Things I like: suffragettes, war workers, factory girls, socialites who got stuff done, ladies who ruled countries, and women who changed the world, even if it was just a little bit. Click on photos for sources.
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Associated Press: Laura Mae Davis Burlingame went to the National World War II Museum looking for a display commemorating her high-school sweetheart. What she found brought tears almost 70 years after 22-year-old Marine Cpl. Thomas “Cotton” Jones died. (May 27)
The National World War II Museum on Tumblr (Greatest Generation)
Hattie Kawahara, American-Japanese student at Mt. Holyoke College, is shown weeding the college victory garden, 1943.
Day 71: April 20
ARTIFACT HIGHLIGHT:
Eleanor Roosevelt used this Red Cross uniform during her 25,000 mile tour of the South Pacific in August-September, 1943 as a representative of the American Red Cross. The First Lady also wore a second uniform made of seersucker fabric during her trip.
Today is World Holocaust Rememberence Day
The photos above are part of the US Holocaust Museum’s Remember Me? Project. They are children displaced by World War II who the museum is hoping to further identify.
Today is World Holocaust Rememberence Day
The photos above are part of the US Holocaust Museum’s Remember Me? Project. They are children displaced by World War II who the museum is hoping to further identify.
Maria Krakovics (Verneuil, France)
As a young girl from New Orleans,Betty Jacobs (Schwartzberg) attended Lelia Haller School of Dance on Canal Street. When the United States entered World War II, she was in the eighth grade at Isidore Newman School. Haller’s dance troupe soon began performing all around Louisiana and Mississippi for servicemen. Betty recalled:
At least three or four times a week we would meet the big Army pickup truck and they would take us to different bases: Camp Beauregard, the Naval Air Station, every camp, Camp Leroy Johnson, the hospital. I vividly remember going to the Marine Hospital — just sad. It was very traumatic for a thirteen-year-old to see such maimed young men…. We just went and we visited with them. And we would take them treats; my mother would make cookies or something, even some smelling aftershave lotion or something like that that the hospital director would tell us would be a little treat for them.
At Camp Plauché, Betty’s troupe performed a show called “Yankee Doodle Dandy” with some of the servicemen included in the cast. The entire Jacobs family helped in the patriotic cause — visiting hospitals, teaching classes at serviceman’s centers, dancing at camps, bringing servicemen home for dinner. Volunteering as a teenager had a deep effect on Betty. She later said about World War II, “I also realized that I lived in a wonderful, wonderful country and it made me just so proud to be an American and to be in this country.”
See more of Betty’s performance costumes, now in the collection of The National WWII Museum.
Pat Jennings Hitchcock of Mt. Horeb, Wisconsin, served as a “clubmobile girl” for the American Red Cross during World War II.
Intended to improve morale and provide a connection home, clubmobiles were converted buses staffed by women who prepared and served coffee and donuts to American soldiers stationed in Europe. In 2012, the volunteer service of Red Cross women who operated Clubmobiles during World War II was recognized by the US Senate.
read more: letters home from Pat to her family, 1945; David Medaris, “Pat Hitchcock: Land Lover,” Isthmus, May 29, 2008
via: World War II Veterans of Mount Horeb, Mt. Horeb Public Library by way of University of Wisconsin Digital Collections
Jean M. Bright (b. 1915) served with the American Red Cross in New Guinea and Japan from 1944 to 1946. After the war, Jean earned a masters degree in English from Columbia University and taught at North Carolina A&T State University until 1978.
Photo via Jackson Library, The University of North Carolina at Greensboro.
Sophie was convicted of high treason for distributing leaflets as part of the anti-Nazi White Rose resistance group. Sophie was executed by guillotine on February 22, 1943. She was 21 years of age.
“After almost fourteen months overseas in England and France the Wacs pictured above were happy to be home. They arrived from France on Friday, March 8th and landed at Staten Island Terminal of the New York Port of Embarkation. They were among the last contingent of the 6888th Central Postal Directory to return from overseas. 3/13/46.”
Servicemen gathered with local residents for a second anniversary party of the George Washington Carver USO club at 101 S. Division St. Doris Brown Aaron (second from right in the front row) was a teenager and said the soldiers were always courteous and well-behaved. Eastern Washington Historical Society/Northwest Museum of Arts and Culture.
The photo above is from a 2008 Spokesman-Review article about Spokane’s World War II era black USO. The Carver USO was founded in 1943 by Rosa D. Malone, a Tuskegee graduate who worked for the Works Progress Administration.
Not all jackets had pin-up girls, cartoons or death dealing icons, the 392nd Bomb Group decided to honor Birdie Schmidt of the American Red Cross (ARC), by naming one of their B-24s, “Birdie Schmidt”. To them, Birdie and her colleagues were more than donut dollies, they were a touch of home away from home.
Sometimes the book was a prop; sometimes it was a symbol; other times, it was actually being read. These 14 works of art from eight nations span...
Woman taking a photograph at the 1970 Monterey Jazz Festival.
Los Angeles Public Library
The Monterey Jazz Festival debuted in 1958 and is one...
Echo Park in 1895: Snow-capped peaks in the distance and rolling countryside all around
The Sexes And The 70’s
