I have not posted more about my father because, frankly, I did not know where to go with this topic. There are just some things I really do not know.
I mentioned that in 1938 my grandmothers second husband had died and my father quit high school in his Junior year to help support the family.
My father was born in 1918 and he would have been twenty at the time. WHY, my grandmother held him back for two years so he and his brother Richard could start together. What was she thinking? Was it easier for her to keep them together, did she have trouble with her parents who would have been her main support? I think this will remain a mystery.
At some point in time he met my mother. She was five years younger than him and initially he though she was too young and just a “kid” His buddy Bill, was dating Mary. Mary and my mom were best friends and classmates who graduated from Duquesne City High School in 1940, she was seventeen at the time.
What I can surmise is that they met a second time and were bridesmaid and best man at Mary and Bills wedding. They started dating again after that. Funny, I had never asked for the who, what, where, when and how about this.
December 7, 1941 was a warm and sunny day and Thomas was outside washing his car, when over the radio came an announcement stating that the Japanese had bombed Pearl Harbor. He said at the time he knew right then and there that we would be going to war.
Tom was working as a machinist for the railroad and I can only surmise that his job perhaps had given him a type of deferment. On 3 May 1943 he was drafted and shipped out to the south of the USA. They were short of equipment and once it was mentioned that the men were learning how to shoot with broomsticks instead of rifles. It sounds like the USA was ill prepared for this war.
After the New Year he received his orders and called my mother and they were married 4 February 1944 and spent five days together before he had to leave.
Some of his relative were angry that he married, he was the sole support of his mother. The allotment he received was divided between his mother and his wife. But, he said he wanted to get married.
Claudia, I couldn't help noticing that your dad was twenty and still in high school, too. I wonder, though, how unusual that was. In my own family, I have a similar story of parents holding the oldest back so two siblings could go to school together. Of course, my version of that story happened a generation preceding your dad's (my grandmother was born in the late 1890s), and she played older sister to a younger brother. But the mere fact that school districts seemed to be okay with those details seems to indicate that officials didn't have any problem with these "unusual" parental wishes.
ReplyDeletePerhaps that wasn't so uncommon, after all...