YANK News From Home

News From Home 11 Aug 44 Ohio - Wyoming

2009-08-19T15:24:00.000-07:00

News From Home Ohio - Wyoming

11 Aug 1944 Down Under Edition

OHIO

Judge Alexander of the Domestic Relations Court in Toledo announced that Lucas County would join other Ohio counties in refusing to grant divorces to the wives of Ohio soldiers and sailors overseas or serving in other states until the defendants were able to appear in court in person. As a part of a juvenile-recreation program young anglers in Columbus were trying to hook a few of the two tons of catfish dumped in lakes in Linden, Schiller, Westgate, Goodale, Franklin and Lincoln Parks by the State Conservation Division. Four gunmen got more than $4,000 in a hold-up of players at an open-air dice game in Brooklyn Village, Cleveland. Cincinnati's Ely Wittstein Legion Post bought a dwelling at Reading Road and Dana Avenue as a veterans home.

OKLAHOMA

Two interurban cars crashed between Oklahoma City and Norman killing six passengers, including two Waves, and injuring 17 others. Tulsa's Mayor Flynn named a Negro civic committee to hold weekly conferences with him on matters affecting residents of the Negro district. Grain-elevator operators at Enid appealed to the U.S. Employment Service for an adequate labor supply to keep the elevators operating at capacity during the harvest season. A southbound Santa Fe passenger train struck a butane truck near Pauls Valley, killing T. Sykes of Cleburne, Tex., the engineer and John Kerr, of Allen the truck driver.

OREGON

Declaring that those necessities of life on which there, are no ceiling prices cost 20 to 35 percent more in Portland than in nearby cities, shipyard workers began a crusade for a reduction of living costs in the Portland area. Many of the first 1,000 Oregon servicemen to be discharged have applied for vocational training; about 25 percent of the men were on the fighting fronts. An opening-night betting record was set at the Gresham Fairgrounds when 4,000 race fans placed $32,843 on their favorite horses. Fire destroyed the Dant & Russell planning mill at Redmond. Sheriff Fred Reaksecker paid the fines of three overseas veterans haled into an Oregon City court for fishing without a license.

PENNSYLVANIA

After complaints from baseball fans at Philadelphia's Shibe Park that bet taking interfered with their enjoyment of the game, five men were fined from $25 to $100 for wagering during one game. Indiana began a drive for $5,000 to construct an alabaster marble arch over Philadelphia Street as a welcome-home tribute to veterans of this war. At Philadelphia, the old Phillies ball park at Broad Street and Lehigh Avenue was sold to a group of businessmen who plan to build stores costing 1 ½ million dollars after the war. More than 400 high-school graduates in Lackawanna County, mostly girls, had applied to the Scranton office of the USES for jobs.

TENNESSEE

Bus and trolley service in Memphis was reduced an estimated 10 percent after operators refused to do further overtime work in protest against the War Labor Board's failure to approve new overtime rates and wage increases. The state formally accepted the 1,300-acre Shelby Forest State Park from the National Forest Service and began preparing it for recreation purposes. The Dixie Spinners, Chattanooga baseball champs, completed the first half of the City League schedule undefeated by beating Cecil King's Bakers 6-3.

TEXAS

Four men perished in a fire that destroyed the tugboat “Gypsum Prince” at Galveston. George Fairtrace succeeded Garland Franks as city manager at Wichita Falls. Forty passengers on a Fort Worth interurban bus, many of them war workers at the Consolidated Vultee Aircraft plant, were injured when the bus skidded during a rainstorm and plunged down the bank of the west fork of Trinity River. Ross Jarrell, USN, of Olney gave the Houston Zoo an Alaska black bear that had been at several outposts in the Aleutian Islands as mascot of the 7th Battalion.

VERMONT

The State Guard held maneuvers on the old fairgrounds in South Wallingford. Springfield won the scholastic baseball title of southern Vermont by walloping Vergennes 15-3 at Rutland; Orleans won the northern title by edging Winooski 1-0 at Newport. Because of the demand by Navy trainees in Camp MacDonough at Plattsburgh," N. Y., for service to Burlington, the steamer Ticonderoga began operation on Lake Champlain a month earlier than last year. Fire destroyed 150 used truck tires in a building of Gay's Express Company in North Westminster.

WASHINGTON

To mark the opening of the Fifth War Loan Drive, Francis Butler threw a baseball from the top of Grand Coulee Dam to Charles Zack on the transfer deck, a distance 300 feet out and 300 feet down. Ronald Smith, 16 years old, sported green-tinted fingernails to match those of his bride when he married Mrs. Mary Breon, 37-year-old mother of two children, at Vancouver. Rain delayed strawberry picking in the Bellingham area. Mearns Gates of Pomeroy was elected president of the U. S. Junior Chamber of Commerce at a session in Omaha, Nebr.

WEST VIRGINIA

Dr. Charles Lawall, president of West Virginia University at Morgantown, was ousted by the board of governors; the students charged the board with playing politics and announced they would continue their fight to retain their proxy. Policeman E. R. Kerns was dismissed from the Bluefield force after a mob marched on the City Hall and threatened to lynch him for allegedly
beating up a soldier. J. E. Orr was elected mayor of Mullens. Fire destroyed the community building at Eleanor in Putnam County.

WYOMING

A bread-and-water diet was prescribed for 94 German prisoners of war who refused to work in the beet fields because there were no benches in the trucks that carried them to work. Cheyenne was bombarded by a 20-minute hailstorm that caused thousands of dollars' damage. Two 6-year-old Cheyenne boys, Dale Forbis and Jimmy VedinJ drowned in Minnehaha lagoon at Holliday Park when they apparently fell from a bridge while fishing for crawdads. Fifty-four Converse County wool growers had deposited clips totaling 246,736 pounds in the Douglas wool warehouse.

YANK 11 Aug 1944 Down Under Edition

Jane High

2009-08-17T21:58:00.000-07:00

Mess lines will be short compared to that forming after the announcement of Jane High that she has never been asked for a pin-up.

YANK 11 Aug 1944 Down Under Edition

It Takes All Kinds

2009-08-17T21:57:00.000-07:00

It Takes All Kinds

Policemen and firemen may join forces for annual benefit balls, but when firemen of Seymour, Conn., spent a night at Coney Island they became otherwise involved with resort police. The disturbance began when boardwalk commandos pushed the firemen out of line outside an amusement place. A plain clothes policeman told the firemen to quiet down but found it necessary to call in reserves and move the visiting firemen to jail where they cooled off through the night. A release was effected at dawn.

At Monterey, Mo., the "best coon dog in southeast Missouri" known as "Old Drive,” was rescued after 10 days in a bottleneck cave where he fell while hunting with a pack of 10 other hounds and his owner Jake Light. The toothless 10-year-old dog was kept alive with rags soaked in bacon grease and dropped through the cave mouth. While 60 neighbors drilled and blasted through a limestone wall, their wives brought them food and a blacksmith set up a field forge to sharpen drills as Jake Light promised the hound "We're going to get you a set of false teeth and half a steer when you get out.”

In New York Father Divine's followers celebrated Sunday with a victory which enabled them to buy War Bonds under their "heavenly" names carried as members of the religious cult. The Harlem post office had refused to sell "angels" bonds under such names as Mrs. Eve Love, Mr. Seven Stars and Miss Wonderfuly Sincere. A Philadelphia police captain, Henry Brown with Louis P. Amarad, U.S. treasury official opened a bond booth in the New York Negro settlement Sunday. Singing and shouting the angels descended triumphantly and purchased $94,000 worth of bonds in seven hours. Philadelphia bond salesmen said the total would be credited to their city's quota.

Grabbing a lead from Artillery liaison plane spotters George Goodrich flew over Utica, N.Y., to locate his stolen auto. He spotted the light green top of his car parked outside a suburban Yorkville (N.Y.) church. Police got it back.

County Judge Ted Feilder of Gering, Nebr., grabbed for his spare spectacles when he read the marriage license of a couple he was about to marry. Their names were Miss Thomas Delgardo, 18, and Mr. Elizabeth Mano, 22, both of Mitchell, Nebr. The couple explained the mix-up occurred when they were named at birth and they had never "got around to correcting it."

Campaigning in favor of a four-hour work day and a work week of two days Charles (Wingy) Wendorf was elected King of Soapbox Orators at the Hobo convention held in Chicago's Dill Pickle Club. Jeff Davis, King of Hoboes, and other candidates for the title withdrew their names from nomination. Bertha (Boxcar) Myers, sole female delegate to the convention, was defeated when Chairman Joe Oelke told the convention, “Women are too gabby and we would all have to shut up and listen if she were elected."

YANK 11 Aug 1944 Down Under Edition

Heat Wave

2009-08-16T16:27:00.000-07:00

While homefolk in nearly all states boiled through a 10-day heat wave, swarms of New Yorkers sought relief in the Coney Island surf.

YANK 11 Aug 1944 Down Under Edition

Milwaukee Nature

2009-08-16T16:24:00.000-07:00

Guinea barbers are not the only clippers to do business in the open air, but there are differences. When the heat wave hit Milwaukee, Wis., barbers moved out dorrs--and closer to one of nature's beauties.

YANK 11 Aug 1944 Down Under Edition

FBI's War Year

2009-08-16T16:15:00.000-07:00

FBI Stats Aug. 1944

Another year of war brought added work for the FBI as well as other government agencies according to a report released by J. Edgar Hoover, director of the organization.

Over 16,000 investigations of suspected sabotage found 1,700 cases of deliberate destruction but non-connected with enemy-directed activity. At least 51 saboteurs were convicted while 531others were successfully charged in connection with other incidents.

A total of 11 spies were sentenced while 695 cases of illegal wearing of military uniform were prosecuted. Of these 396 were for impersonating an officer or government official.

Convicted draft dodgers and other Selective Service violators numbering 5,302 drew fines totaling $459,468.02 and collective sentences of more than 14,646 years.

The trial of orchestra leader Teddy Powell, 38, for conspiring with a draft board clerk to evade the draft is still on the untried docket. Powell is at liberty under $3,000 bond. John W. Wilson, chief clerk of New York Board 20, charged with accepting the bribes, committed suicide following similar charges in another case.

YANK 11 Aug 1944 Down Under Edition

News From Home 11 Aug 44 Maryland-North Dakota

2009-08-15T19:44:00.000-07:00

MARYLAND

The Navy announced plans to build a 4-million-dollar ordnance laboratory on the Old Bladensburg Road in Prince Georges County. Nearly a million baby chicks burned to death in a $125,000 fire that destroyed the Harry Nock hatchery at Snow Hill. Died at Baltimore: James Keelty, 74, who built more than 6,000 Baltimore homes in the last 40 years, as well as St. Bernadine's Roman Catholic Church, which he gave to the Archdiocese of Baltimore as a memorial to his daughter. Mrs. Eva Dean, a strip-tease dancer at Baltimore's Clover Theater, suffered jaw injuries when she fell off the stage.

MASSACHUSETTS

Bathing was banned at Nantasket Beach for 24 hours while the Army exploded mines in the vicinity. Fire did 1 million dollars damage to the National Chair factory at Roxbury and $30,000 damage to the Pierce Building at Clinton from which firemen rescued six persons. Newton High won the Eastern Massachusetts scholastic baseball title by defeating Medford 3-2. Springfield Police Chief Gallagher said that 15-year-old William Roach, named; the "most typical American boy" in his junior-high yearbook, had confessed that he gave 14-year-old Carolyn Bennett a ride on his bicycle to Forest Park near Springfield and there shot her to death "because she was going out with other boys.” Died: Lawrence's former Mayor Kane.

MICHIGAN

Paw Paw's service honor roll proved too small, so a new one with a capacity of 850 names was built. Local 50 of the United Automobile Workers (CIO) announced an assessment of $1 per member at the Willow Run bomber plant to establish a servicemen's fund of $25,000. Mr. and Mrs. William Angell of Detroit gave Kalamazoo College $50,000 to construct a new athletic field. Chester McEachern, St. Clair Shores druggist, was charged with embezzling $7,226 from the American Railway Express Company, for which his store was an agency. Pickers and packers were badly needed to handle the largest cherry crop in the history of the Grand Traverse region.

MISSOURI

To meet the need for men, the Frisco Railroad started a six-day training course for brakemen, switchmen and firemen at Kansas City. Charged with murder of Mr. and Mrs. Albert Foltz and their son Ladwin on their Shelby County farm, Raymond Patrick of Monroe City was jailed at Paris. Escaping from a sack in the back of the car, a copperhead snake curled around the neck of Moody Lentz, reptiles curator of the St. Louis Zoo, as Lentz was driving home from a snake-hunting trip in Arkansas; Lentz stopped the car and his companion jumped out and recaptured the snake as it slithered to the running board.

MONTANA

H Gov. Ford will be opposed by J. Thorkelson of Butte for the Republican nomination for governor in the primary election on July 18; candidates for the Democratic nomination were Roy Ayers of Lewiston, Leif Erickson of Sidney and A. B. Middleton of Deer Lodge. Charles Gorman became acting postmaster of Havre, succeeding George Wright, who was appointed U. S. marshal. The Rev. D. P. Meagher’s prized fly rod was stolen while he was visiting a Great Falls hospital. Sugar-beet fields around Billings were being tilled by 250 German war prisoners.

NEVADA

Ernest Brooks of Washoe County was elected chairman of the Republican State Committee without opposition at the State GOP Convention at Reno. The Navy's 5-millon-dollar auxiliary air station was commissioned at Fallon. At Las Vegas, Mr. and Mrs. Jack McConnell became the parents of a 16-pound boy, their sixth child. After juveniles destroyed $300 worth of electrical fixtures in the recreation center at South Centers and Ryland Streets, Reno, Police Chief Fletcher offered a $25 reward for their arrest.

NEW JERSEY

North Jersey faced a beer drought as 4,000 workers in eight breweries in the Newark area went on strike over the refusal of the management to guarantee a minimum work week of 40 hours. Sheriff Robert Tipping of Bergen County fired six of his 15 court attendants because they refused to act as jailers during the summer. Fourteen persons were injured when a salute bomb exploded prematurely at an air-raid demonstration in Union Square, Elizabeth. Gov. Edge announced that at least 337,000 of New Jersey's estimated 375,000 servicemen and women were already listed to get ballots in the November election.

NEW YORK

Plans were approved by the Queens County Board of Planners for a new race track to be built near Flushing after the war at which all profits will go to war-relief agencies; Col. John Hay (Jock) Whitney is one of the backers. Syracuse barbers began charging 75 cents for haircuts. Albany's Police Chief Fitzpatrick was accused by a special Albany County grand jury of failure to prosecute gamblers in his jurisdiction. Streamlined and enlarged, the Stage Door Canteen in Times Square reopened after being closed for alterations for five weeks. Snow fell in Olean on June 7.

NORTH CAROLINA

John Dunlap, principal of the Piedmont Junior High School in Charlotte, succeeded Charles Blackburn, retired, as business manager and treasurer of the Charlotte school system. A $150,000 fire destroyed the Bunch furniture store in Statesville. Wilbur Dosher of Wilmington was elected president of the North Carolina Chapter of the National Association of Postmasters. Died;

John Caldwell, city manager of Chapel Hill for the past 12 years. Hiram Grantham, former mayor of Red Springs, in the Highsmith Hospital in Fayetteville.

NORTH DAKOTA

North Dakota crops in general and spring wheat in particular were in excellent condition. Earl Abramson resigned as superintendent of Mohall's public schools. The North Dakota Post War Highway Improvement Association circulated a petition to initiate a measure at the November election calling for issuance of $12,360,000 in state bonds to match Federal funds for a highway program after the war. The Valley City Baptist Church observed its 50th anniversary.

YANK 11 Aug 1944 Down Under Edition

News From Home 11 Aug 44 Alabama-Maine

2009-08-15T15:52:00.000-07:00

ALABAMA

The Alabama Supreme Court ruled that E.J. Burns, Jefferson County real-estate dealer, must be executed Aug. 18 for the murder of Jake Prescott, a member of the Jefferson County Democratic Committee, whose mutilated body was found in Short Creek in February 1943. A young black bear, which apparently had wandered from the swamps off the Styx and Black-water Rivers, was killed by a train at Robertsdale in Baldwin County. Gov. Sparks named Mrs. Winston Stewart of Rockford to serve as probate judge of Coosa County while her husband is in the Navy.

ARIZONA

Reporting on a survey of building permits, City Building Inspector Herreras declared that Tucson can expect a 2 ½ million-dollar post-war construction boom. Mrs. Annella Gibbons was appointed Apache County treasurer to succeed

Wallace Dewitt, who resigned to become supervisor of the U. S. Weather Bureau recently established at St. Johns. There were no prisoners in the Gila County Jail at Globe for the first time in 35 years.

CALIFORNIA

San Francisco civilians had exclusive use of the Top o' the Mark bar in the Hotel Mark Hopkins for a week after it was declared off limits for servicemen because an Army officer cracked one of its 8x10 plate-glass windows while demonstrating with a highball glass the correct method of throwing a hand grenade. School Supt. Crawford gave his consent to the employment of a large number of 16 to 18-year-old girls in San Diego aircraft plants and at the Naval Air Station. Dist. Atty. Gilbert Ferrell began a drive against gamblers in San Mateo County.

COLORADO

Pleading guilty to selling liquor after hours, Albert Koerner, who operates the padlocked Blakeland Inn southwest of Littleton, was fined $200 in a Denver court by District Judge Meikle of Castle Rock. Fourteen residents were recruited to serve on the Mesa County Ration Board after the old board resigned in sympathy with chairman Silmon Smith and James S. Gormley, whose resignations were requested by the OPA. At Hugo, James Pickenpaugh was charged with the murder of Noah Holt, a Rush rancher who died in a Colorado Springs hospital from injuries incurred in a fight with Pickenpaugh, his neighbor.

GEORGIA

Mrs. Alan Stillwell shot a four-foot alligator she found on the front porch of her home on Wilmington Island near Savannah when she returned home late one night. Downtown Atlanta was thrown in an uproar when a hold-up man robbed the Western Union office on Peachtree Street of $223, tried to flee in a taxi and got in a fight with the driver whom he had held up the week before; with a crowd at his heels the bandit escaped. The State Board of Regents authorized a trade school for Negroes at Georgia State College.

IDAHO

Twenty-one persons were treated for burns at the Farragut Naval Training Center hospital after the excursion boat “Penguin” burned following an explosion during a trip sponsored by the USO on Lake Pend Oreille; the boat, owned by T. H. Williford of Sandpoint, exploded as it left the pier at Whisky Rock. Payette needed 300 pickers to harvest its cherry crop. With nine sons and seven daughters, George Piatt of Burley won honors for having the largest family in Cassia County for the fifth time.

ILLINOIS

Marion made plans to build a swimming pool after the war and Peoria a million-dollar YMCA. The Illinois winter wheat crop is 50 percent larger than past year's; despite spring floods, other field crops were expected to be average. The General Electric Company opened a defense plant at Benton. Staley's started building a new million-dollar soybean processing plant at Decatur. The bullet-riddled body of Virgil Starnes, Quincy gambler, was found in Bird Slough. A lack of teachers had closed 300 Illinois rural schools since the war began. Died: Dr. Walter Ritchie, Bloomington dentist and former all American quarterback at Illinois Wesleyan.

INDIANA

An unshaven bandit robbed the Farmers State Bank at Walkerton of $2,078 after locking three employees in the vault. At Indianapolis, the Methodist Hospital closed an entire floor because of a shortage of paid and volunteer help. After notifying police that his $94 pay check had been lost, or stolen, Warren Kidder, Evansville war worker, discovered his 2-year-old daughter had chewed it up. A cow owned by James Gatewood of Noblesville produced her fifth set of twin calves. State police captured two escaped German war prisoners near Carlisle.

IOWA

Camp Dodge, where 130,000 Iowans were processed in this war, was closed as an induction center; hereafter Iowa inductees will be sent to Fort Snelling, Minn.; Jefferson Barracks, Mo., or Fort Leavenworth, Kans. Bridgewater’s fire truck burned up despite the efforts of the Massena and Fontanelle fire departments to save the Metzer garage in which the truck was-parked. Gov. Hickenlooper of Cedar Rapids, Republican, will oppose Senator Guy Gillette of Cherokee, Democrat, for his seat in the U. S. Senate. Millions of insect parasites, flown from New Jersey, were released in Page County to combat plant lice that were attacking apple orchards.

LOUISIANA

A 25-million-dollar alumina factory built at Baton Rouge by the Federal Government was being decommissioned. Mike Bardwell was appointed principal off Hammond High School. Nineteen-year-old Richard (Smiling Dick) Callahan, who pitched the Holy Cross College Prep School baseball team of New Orleans to three state championships, received a $15,000 bonus for signing a contract with the Boston Red Sox.

MAINE

Augusta was visited by a 600-pound cow moose which scattered Sunday strollers in the downtown area until it was roped; afterward it was freed beyond the city limits. William Kiley, baseball coach at Cheverus High, Portland, was named municipal recreation director. Agriculture Commissioner Smith reported that drought had practically destroyed the hay crop. Sydney Greenbie of Castine was named special assistant to the American minister to New Zealand. Paul Casey and Edwin Bridges drowned in Cathance Lake, Calais, at a high-school picnic. Died at Damariscotta: Capt. Peter Littlejohn, master mariner, at 79.

YANK 11 Aug 1944 Down Under Edition

Coming Soon

2009-08-14T14:40:00.000-07:00

Coming Soon, a separate blog about all the amazing things that occured on the homefront in America during World War II from the pages of YANK magazine.