Home Front Workers

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  Geraldine Anthony

  Born in Bartow County, Georgia, in 1927, Geraldine Anthony worked as a janitor at Bell Aircraft in Marietta during World War II. She swept the factory floor of metal shavings and debris that fell from B-29 planes during construction. After the war, she worked on a cotton farm before taking a job with Goodyear Tire in Rome, Georgia. 
  
  Click here to watch Geraldine Anthony's videos 
  
  Topics: The Great Depression, Arsenal of Democracy, Women in War, Postwar America
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  Tooken Richardson Cade

  Born in Michigan in 1924, Dolores “Tooken” Richardson Cade earned her nickname while working the photo booth at the United Service Organizations (USO) in Detroit. She met a sailor who gave her a bracelet etched with the word “Tooken” to signify their engagement. Married in 1944, they were parents to four sons by the time they moved to Georgia in the 1960s. 
  
  Click here to watch Tooken Richardson Cade's videos 
  
  Topics: Women in War, Pearl Harbor, The USO, Rationing, Military Training
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  William Campbell

  Born in Oklahoma in 1937, William Campbell moved to Oklahoma City when his father was drafted into the military during World War II. For two years, Campbell lived in an abandoned barber shop with his mother and sister and depended on his grandparents for financial support. After college, Campbell got a job with the Lockheed corporation and moved to Georgia. 
  
  Click here to watch William Campbell's videos 
  
  Topics: The Great Depression, War in Europe, Rationing, The USO, Postwar America
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  June Chandler

  Born in 1935, June Chandler grew up outside London in the borough of Enfield. During World War II, her neighborhood sustained heavy German bombing, and Chandler had to evacuate to the north. After the war she married an American serviceman stationed in England, and they moved to Georgia where he took a job with the Lockheed corporation. 
  
  Click here to watch June Chandler's videos 
  
  Topics: War in Europe, Rationing, Postwar America
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  Deryck Cook

  Born in Exton, England, in 1938, Deryck Cook could not remember a time before the world was at war. Although the worst bombings of the Battle of Britain had ended by the time Cook was in school, gas masks remained compulsory and air raids were common. Cook recalls how his family played host to three evacuated children from Coventry, how ration stamps were required for purchases in the village shop run by his mother and aunt, and how the village children begged chewing gum from American troops stationed there between 1943 and 1944. Cook left England in 1982 with his wife and three children, moving first to Toronto, Canada, and then to Detroit, Michigan, and finally to Georgia where he has lived for more than thirty years.

  Click here to watch Cook's videos.

  Topics: War in Europe, Rationing, The Blitz, War in Europe, Racism in the Military, Prisoners of War, Women in War
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  Alan Davies

  Born in the East End of London in 1932, Alan Davies was evacuated to the English countryside during World War II because of German air raids. As an adult Davies worked for the Air Force Exchange Service on an American military base in Germany. After transferring to the United States with his job, Davies retired in 1993. 
  
  Click here to watch Alan Davies' videos 
  
  Topics: Start of War, War in Europe, Winston Churchill, Victory Celebrations
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  Paula Fidler

  Born in Ohio in 1926, Paula Fidler got a job as a secretary for Air Materiel Command at Wright-Patterson Air Field during World War II. One of her assignments included recording the experiences of military officials who helped develop the atomic bomb. After the war Fidler married a paratrooper and lived in Europe and Asia before retiring to Georgia. 
  
  Click here to watch Paula Fidler's videos 
  
  Topics: The Great Depression, Arsenal of Democracy, Women in War, The USO, The Atomic Bomb, After the War, Postwar America
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  Lee Foringer

  Born in Texas in 1919, Lee Foringer married at the start of World War II and moved to Long Beach, California. When her husband joined the Army Air Corps, she found a job at Douglas Aircraft as a riveter building B-17s and B-19s. Foringer continued to work after she became pregnant with her first child. After the war she worked as a buyer for women’s dress shops. 
  
  Click here to watch Lee Foringer's videos 
  
  Topics: Pearl Harbor, Arsenal of Democracy, Women in War, War in the Pacific, Prisoner of War, Victory Celebrations
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  Earline Gaither

  Born in Mississippi in 1925, Earline Gaither married as a teenager and moved to Michigan during World War II. She got a job on the assembly line at Willow Run airplane factory, where she oiled the guns, installed the flying instruction manual, and added the night-flying curtains. After the war she settled in Marietta, Georgia, and enjoyed a long term career as a manager at Sears. 
  
  Click here to watch Earline Gaither's videos 
  
  Topics: The Great Depression, Pearl Harbor, Arsenal of Democracy, Women in War, War in the Pacific, Rationing, North vs. South, FDR, Postwar America
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  Edith Gray

  Born in Canton, Georgia, in 1925, Edith Gray met her future husband in high school. Before he shipped out to the Pacific in World War II, Gray accepted his marriage proposal. In his absence, she attended business school and worked as a secretary at Canton Cotton Mills. After the war they settled in Rome, Georgia, and Gray worked as a homemaker. 
  
  Click here to watch Edith Gray's videos 
  
  Topics: The Great Depression, Pearl Harbor, Rationing, War in the Pacific, Women in War, Postwar America
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  Edna Hicks

  Born in 1930, Edna Hicks grew up in Harrow, a suburb of London that sustained considerable bombing from German planes during World War II. After the war Hicks got a job at a post exchange on a military base and met an American pilot. They married in 1956 and lived on six bases in the United States before retiring to Warner Robins, Georgia. 
  
  Click here to watch Edna Hicks' videos 
  
  Topics: Start of War, War in Europe, Women in War, Rationing, Victory Celebrations, After the War, Postwar America
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  Louvinia Jordan

  Louvinia Jordan was born on a farm in North Carolina in 1922. During the Second World War, Jordan became a cryptographic clerk or “codebreaker” in the Signal Corps and deciphered top secret Japanese codes. After the war she married a veteran of the Pacific War and worked as a bookkeeper for a newspaper. 
  
  Click here to watch Louvinia Jordan's videos 
  
  Topics: Women in War, North vs. South, War in the Pacific, Victory Celebrations
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  Marcel Kohler

  Marcel Kohler was born in Utrecht, the Netherlands, in 1950, five years after the end of World War II. He is the youngest of three siblings, with an older brother born three years after the war, and an older sister who was a child during the Nazi occupation of the Netherlands. His family experienced hardships during the occupation, including food shortages and threats to their property by the occupying forces. During the war, they hid their valuables in secret cabinets, and his sister later shared stories with him of Jewish people hidden in the attic. The Kohler family immigrated to the United States in 1955 and settled in Lansing, Michigan.

  Click here to watch Marcel Kohler's videos. 

  Topics: Rationing, War in Europe, Holocaust Resistance, The Camps, Immigrant Stories
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  Lori Lee

  Born in Kentucky in 1936, Lori Lee spent her earliest years in southern China, where her parents worked as missionaries among the boat people on the Pearl River. In December 1941, Lee and her family were forced into confinement by Japanese occupational forces. They eventually repatriated to the United States. After attending boarding school in Canada, Lee lived in California and Great Britain before retiring to Georgia. 
  
  Click here to watch Lori Lee's videos 
  
  Topics: Pearl Harbor, War in the Pacific, Women in War, Postwar America
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  Clay Manley

  Born in Tennessee in 1935, Clay Manley spent his childhood moving throughout the Southeast. His father was a supervisor for the Blair Construction company which took government contracts, first as a part of the New Deal, and then as a result of wartime production. After graduating from Mercer University, Manley attended Union Theological Seminary in New York and became a Baptist minister in Georgia.

  Click here to watch Clay Manley's videos

  Topics: Rationing, Military Training, War in Europe, Postwar America
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  Bettye McCubbin

  Born in 1921, Bettye McCubbin grew up in Kansas City. She left college to work for the United States Employment Service and later got a clerical job with Pratt & Whitney, a manufacturer of airplane engines. After the war McCubbin wrote for the Kansas City Star and married her high school sweetheart, a World War II pilot. They moved to Georgia in 2004. 
  
  Click here to watch Bettye McCubbin's videos 
  
  Topics: Arsenal of Democracy, Women in War, The USO, Postwar America
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  Mary McJunkin

  Born in Rome, Georgia in 1921, Mary McJunkin quit school to care for her younger siblings after her mother’s death. At 20, she married a serviceman who was transferred to a military base in California. McJunkin worked the night shift at an airplane factory outside Los Angeles. She followed her husband to bases around the country until he went overseas in 1944. 
  
  Click here to watch Mary McJunkin's videos 
  
  Topics: The Great Depression, Arsenal of Democracy, The USO, Women in War
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  Joy Mitchell

  Born in Rome, Georgia, in 1925, Joy Mitchell worked at the city's newly constructed Battey Hospital during World War II. Posted at the front desk, Mitchell wrote passes for family members and friends visiting soldiers who were recovering from injuries sustained in Europe and Asia. After the war Mitchell became a university librarian.

  Click here to watch Joy Mitchell's videos

  Topics: Women in War, War in the Pacific
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  Jessie Moss

  Born in Forsyth County, Georgia in 1918, Jessie Moss took a job at Bell Aircraft Corporation during World War II. She worked on a team building fuselages for B-29 bombers. When her husband returned from fighting in the Pacific, Moss paid for the construction of their first home with money saved from her job at Bell Aircraft. 
  
  Click here to watch Jessie Moss's videos 
  
  Topics: The Great Depression, Pearl Harbor, Arsenal of Democracy, The USO, Women in War, North vs. South, Postwar America
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  Anna Ostergaard

  Born in 1929, Anna Ostergaard grew up on a farm in Denmark. After Germany invaded in 1940, she stayed away from the cities, where air raids sent people fleeing into bomb shelters. Ostergaard's family survived on a consistent supply of vegetables from the garden. Ostergaard married after the war and immigrated to the United States in 1955.
  

  Click here to watch Anna Ostergaard's videos

  Topics: Rationing, War in Europe, After the War, Postwar America 
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  Jean Ousley

  Born in 1945, Jean Ousley met her father for the first time after he returned from service in World War II. Her mother worked at the Kellogg Plant in Battle Creek, Michigan, and then as a welder at a factory in California. As an adult, Ousley led the Georgia chapter of the American Rosie the Riveter Association because of her mother’s contributions to the war effort. 
  
  Click here to watch Jean Ousley's videos 
  
  Topics: FDR, Arsenal of Democracy, Women in War, Postwar America, Second Generation
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  Mary D'Souza Sequeira

  Born in 1933, Mary D'Souza Sequeira grew up under British rule in India. A prodigious track and field athlete from childhood, she competed in the First and Second Asian Games and the 1952 Olympics. She later represented India's National Railways system before immigrating to the United States in 1991. 
  
  Click here to watch Mary D'Souza Sequeira's videos 
  
  Topics: Rationing, Jesse Owens
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  Jane Tucker

  Born in Lineville, Alabama in 1927, Jane Tucker moved to Savannah to get a job at Southeastern Shipbuilding Corporation during World War II. She became a rod welder and made $1.20 an hour. After the war she attended Northwestern University and became a dental hygienist. In 2010 she started the Rome, Georgia, chapter of the American Rosie the Riveter Association. 
  
  Click here to watch Jane Tucker's videos 
  
  Topics: The Great Depression, Pearl Harbor, Arsenal of Democracy, Rationing, The USO, Women in War, North vs. South, Postwar America

  Jane Tucker's Georgia Focus Interview (air date: June 2016):
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  Hank Van Driel

  Born in Schiedam in 1934, Hank Van Driel was celebrating his sixth birthday when the Nazis marched into the Netherlands. He and his family endured five years of hardship and near-starvation rations during the German occupation. After the war, Van Driel studied to become a chef and worked at hotels and restaurants in Rotterdam, eventually landing a job on the Holland America line of cruise ships in 1962. Attracted by steady work in the American resort industry, Van Driel immigrated to the United States in 1964. He has remained a citizen of the Netherlands and travels frequently between the countries. Hank Van Driel recorded his Legacy Series oral history interview at the Museum of History and Holocaust Education on February 28, 2020.

  Click here to watch Hank Van Driel's videos.

  Topics: Start of War, Nazi Occupation, War in Europe, Rationing