A History of the Wife (52 page)

In middle- and lower-class homes, where maids were extremely rare (except in Southern cities serviced by black domestics), there was often a new presence—that of the wartime boarder. With acute housing shortages in certain locales, the National Housing Agency launched a “Share Your Home” campaign destined to produce some 1.5 million

shared homes. Families took in boarders to help ease the housing shortage and to bring in extra income.

Sometimes the boarders became good family friends, people to count on for baby-sitting and emergencies. This was the case for a migrant family in Fort Worth, Texas, who had moved in with another family of war workers. Both fathers worked nights, and “it was great to have two mothers” during the day, as one of the children remembered years later.
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This was also the case for an African-American family in Berkeley, California, who took in five roomers—a young black man, his wife, and their baby residing in the kitchen, and two young men in a room upstairs. Because the landlady and her husband both worked in the post office and she had a job six days a week from 7
A
.
M
. to 3:30
P
.
M
., she was glad to have another woman in the house while she was away at work.
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The “landlady” has a very long history. For centuries, wives, wid- ows, and single women have rented rooms in their homes or run boardinghouses to support themselves and their families. For the most part, brothels notwithstanding, the work of the landlady was consid- ered a respectable female occupation, and in wartime, an honorable one as well.

VOLUNTEERISM

Wartime wives and mothers were also asked to participate in a vari- ety of community activities. Mrs. Somerville’s columns highlighted those women whose volunteer work aided the war effort. Kudos for “Mrs. Albert Smith, County Chairman of Women at War. With her happy smile and enthusiasm, it is no wonder that her bond drive is being crowned with the success that always accompanies her efforts along any line” (April 9, 1943). Kudos for Mrs. Ed Kossman, who taught a Red Cross knitting class to fifteen ladies “at the lovely home of Mrs. Tom Boschert” (May 7, 1943). And kudos for Mrs. Lois Hardee, who worked in the local Ration Board (May 21, 1943).

Women’s clubs, with their 12 million members, gave themselves wholeheartedly to defense activities.
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For once, a common goal united such diverse organizations as the National Federation of Busi- ness and Professional Women, the Daughters of the American Revolu- tion, the Young Women’s Christian Association, the National Council

of Catholic, or Jewish, or Negro Women, the American Association of College Women, the 4-H, the Homemakers’ Clubs, and the Junior League, to name only a few of the most prominent. Every local garden club and reading group found some way to contribute: by leading a war bond drive, by organizing the salvage of newspapers and tin cans, by knitting socks for the servicemen, by preparing for emergencies. New organizations and drives sprung up to meet war-related prob- lems. In Texas, the Federation of Women’s Clubs organized a statewide nutrition campaign in keeping with governmental efforts to promote healthful diets. In Cincinnati, San Francisco, and several other cities, groups were formed to assess housing needs for defense workers.

In the coastal cities, where there was widespread fear of enemy attacks, women and men prepared for civil defense. They went to their posts as air raid wardens and plane spotters. Behind them stood thousands of women trained as nurses, nurse’s aides, ambulance driv- ers, and communications operators, many under the auspices of the Red Cross. In some areas they prepared for evacuation, with special attention to children, the aged, and the handicapped. And all the while they were told that they were responsible, first and foremost, for the well-being of their families. “The first task of every American mother is the adequate training and discipline of her own house- hold.”
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The American Red Cross contained the largest number of volunteers in the nation. Founded in 1881 by Clara Barton, it had a history of emergency aid that depended primarily on women serving as nurses, chauffeurs, ambulance drivers, canteen operators, telephone and tele- graph personnel, liaison with military families, and relief workers for needy civilians.

For thousands of women, the Red Cross became a way of life during the war years. Typically these women were, like Evelyn Guthrie, mar- ried, middle or upper class and middle-aged. But younger women, too, of lesser social standing, found in the Red Cross an outlet for their patriotic urges, especially when their husbands were stationed away from home.

Marjorie Reid Killpack, a former elementary school teacher from Utah, followed her husband to various postings from coast to coast during his first two years in the Marines. When he was shipped to the

Pacific she returned to Utah, where she decided to volunteer time to the Red Cross. Though her letter of March 8, 1944, shows the deference she always paid to her husband, there is also an incipient new spirit of independence related to the Red Cross work.

Dearest Husband:

. . . Elliot, I’ve had something happen today. I hope will meet your approval. Margaret Keller told me to call this Mrs. Greenwell of the American Red Cross. They were in need of case workers. I did and am beginning in the morning for a trial period for the balance of this month. It is something that will be completely absorbingly new and that which I’ve wanted to try for a long time. . . .

I have to stand by for night telegrams every other week and have duty every other week end, but both girls who are working there say there’s constantly something interesting happening—and it’s absorb- ing.

Elliott, I have tried my best to make good decisions. This is not cer- tain I’ll stay with the Red Cross but at any time it would be a good rec- ommendation for other work. Hope you’ll think it’s okay—if you don’t want me to, let me know as soon as possible. Your approval is necessary to my happiness and peace of mind. . . .

Goodnite dear one, heaven’s blessings on you.

Yours devotedly, Marjorie
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A month later, Marjorie had settled into a schedule of Red Cross work on Monday, Saturday, and Sunday, a schedule that would proba- bly have been impossible for a wife with a resident husband and/or children. Work kept her mind off her husband’s dangerous combat duties and her loneliness without him. “Well, dear,” she wrote on November 1, 1944, “my life goes on, busily but certainly my days are not complete, for you are gone. It’s good I can’t think too much as I’d spend my time in trying to heal a very lonely and empty heart.”

As the war progressed and many servicemen returned home wounded, the Red Cross played an important role in rehabilitation programs. Under Red Corps auspices, membership in the “Gray Ladies” became the pride of older women trained to help the men on their road to recovery. At Dibble General Hospital in Menlo Park, California, they

and the other Red Cross volunteers spent countless hours at the bed- side of the severely wounded, helping them keep up their morale in the face of lost limbs, devastating burns, and blindness. They organized recreational programs featuring local and nationally known entertain- ers. They helped out in occupational therapy, where the men learned skills in weaving, leather work, jewelry making, ceramics, woodwork- ing, and radio repair. They were there to provide those extras that paid staff are often too busy to provide.

From the unpublished diary of Mrs. Maybelle Hargrove, who pio- neered Red Cross Activities at Dibble, one reads of her initial work sewing on insignias for the men who were going out of the hospital on passes (Sept. 16, 1944):

First the boy with an Asiatic ribbon, who had won a good con- duct. . . . Then the good looking boy who wondered why men couldn’t have wedding rings too? I told him he should feel complimented because his wife trusted him. That when I was married during World War I “You bet I labeled my soldier with a wedding ring!” . . . A col- ored boy came up and wanted an airforce insignia sewed on his shoul- der. Told him that looked familiar ’cause my boy was in the A.A.F. . . . A Jewish boy sat watching me. Asked if he had something to be sewed—“No, I was a
tailor
before I landed in the quartermaster dept.” . . . Then there was the boy I would like to have brought home with me—Gonzales was his name. Showed me the pictures of his fam- ily. His father lived in Colorado—his mother and married sister in Long Beach. He had never been in Northern Calif. . . . I fastened a gold star to his ribbons—one a purple heart ribbon, good conduct too. He was coming back to the hospital to sleep because he had no place to go in P.A. [Palo Alto].
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Mrs. Hargrove’s diary gives us a good cross section of the “boys” aided by Red Cross women: Asian-Americans, African-Americans, Jews, and Latinos, as well as whites of varying European ancestry. Though she took note of their ethnic and religious inheritance, Mrs. Hargrove seems to have been above prejudice when it came to the treat- ment of wounded servicemen.

An article in a local Bay Area newspaper reported in December 1944,

A well-earned Christmas rest is being enjoyed today by the Red Cross women of the three peninsula chapters. . . . The Red Cross pro- vided and trimmed 47 trees for Dibble, 43 small ones for the wards and four large trees that tower in the recreation and mess hall. The arts and crafts corps spent uncounted hours teaching the patients to make tree ornaments of scrap tin, highlighted with paint, that turned out to be glistening, modernistic decorations.

A total of 1,600 gifts for the men, bought with funds donated by local organizations, were selected and delivered by the Red Cross. Heading the list of wanted presents were shaving lotion, pocket picture frames, writing cases and GI socks and ties. Sixteen hundred red, green and white tarleton bags stitched in red wool were also delivered to Dibble. They were filled with candy (much of which was contributed by the public) and two packages of cigarets, the gift of the Red Cross.

POSTWAR WIVES

Nearly one million foreign brides wed American servicemen during and after World War II.
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Though the U.S. government discouraged such marriages and put up endless bureaucratic barriers, love-struck

G.I.s were not to be dissuaded. In Europe they married women mainly from Great Britain (a record number in the spring of 1944 before the invasion), France, and Italy. During the occupation, despite an official non-fraternization policy, they married Germans and Austrians. In the Pacific arena, they married women from Australia and New Zealand, and after the War Brides Act of 1945 overturned previous legislation designed to exclude Asian immigrants, they married women from China, Japan, and the Philippines. Seventy-five percent of these brides eventually came to America.

With the liberation of Europe, Americans began planning for the postwar period. Questions about the end of hostilities and the return- ing soldiers were linked to questions about their wives and families. The 1944
Harper’s
article “Housekeeping after the War” (referred to ear- lier) took a progressive view of women’s future possibilities. It asked whether women would continue to be “mere servants of their husbands and children,” or whether some system could be devised that would enable wives “to do a good job of housekeeping and still have time to hold down an outside job.” The authors came up with a number of sug-

gestions for “living pleasantly without servants” under the (correct) assumption that fewer and fewer people would have them. Some of their predictions have come to pass, but some of the most important— those dealing with communal housing and childcare—have not.

For one thing, postwar manufacturers did produce better and cheaper vacuum cleaners, toasters, electric mixers, washing machines, even sturdy dishwashing machines to replace the inefficient prewar models, and other timesaving appliances, although, as the article pre- dicted, these items would still need to be constantly cleaned and occa- sionally repaired. Another anticipated boon was the rise of the commercial cleaning service, with a team of bonded, well-equipped workers arriving on a regular schedule. Also, the steady increase of ready-to-serve food, accelerated during the war years, continued in the postwar years ad nauseam.

But the field where the authors saw “the greatest opportunity for organized service,” in the creation and improvement of nursery schools and childcare centers, did not keep up with the need. Wives in postwar America were as much on their own in finding adequate childcare as their mothers had been a generation earlier. The lessons of federally subsidized childcare and on-location centers were lost with the war’s end.

The popular sentiment (
Harper’s
notwithstanding) was that women should go home and resume their roles as wives, mothers, and home- makers. Now that the men were back, there was ostensibly no need for married women to work. And with unemployment greeting thousands of returning servicemen, women were asked, once again, not to take a job away from a man.

After all, these men were returning from untold horrors and had every right to expect the rewards of guaranteed work and loving homes. Not all men were so lucky. Some found that employment in their home locale or in their chosen field was not available, and had to make major adjustments in their career expectations. In addition, the housing shortage forced many couples to live with their parents, adding intergenerational stress to the marriage. One wartime wife recalled:

Money was scarce and apartments were nil, and we were going to stick it out and live with Mom. . . . My sister, who is two years older

than me, she is there with her new husband out of the Army and her first baby. . . . Here you have two married couples. I have a baby on the way, my sister has a baby, so it was insanity, insanity. I couldn’t wait to get out of there.
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It was often hard for mothers who had headed households during the war to relinquish their authority to husbands unfamiliar with their own children and the family codes. Remembering her husband’s return after two years in the war to a son he didn’t know, one wife spoke of her family’s “difficult adjustment period.... All of a sudden from having one parent, one boss saying ‘no,’ now there are two people there to say ‘no.’ ”
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