On Pearl Harbor Day, we take a look back with the Greatest Generation
It was a date which will "live in infamy", as President Franklin Roosevelt so eloquently stated after the sneak attack on Pearl Harbor on December 7, 1941 that launched the United States into World War II. But for the people who lived through that time, it was more than a date in the history books. It was their childhood.
Remember life before telephones and television, refrigerators and grocery stores, clothes washers and dryers...even showers? Most of us don’t.
Out of roughly 322 million Americans in 2016, only 1.5 million were from the generation that can still recall life before these modern inventions.
Known as the G.I Generation, WWII Generation, Traditionalists, or the phrase news anchor Tom Brokaw made famous—the Greatest Generation—these individuals will be the last to remember these innovations we now take for granted.
Their world was a time of duty before pleasure, respecting authority, making do or doing without, hard work, paying cash and saving money, focusing on family, patriotism, sacrifice and service. I found it eye-opening to take a look back with a few of these folks and hear their stories of what life was like.
Home Life
“My mom sewed pretty near everything we wore. We traded milk and eggs for material and shoes. You had one set of clothes that you’d use for going out and two sets for at home and school,” says Hugo Wilke, 89, who grew up on a farm in southern Illinois. City life wasn’t much different, and though dress shops existed, most couldn’t afford them.
“Mother made my clothes,” recalls Anna Marr, 85. who was born at home on 49th Street in Chattanooga. “She even made my underwear and slips. About the only thing I could get bought was shoes. I wanted store-bought clothes really bad.”
The basics, that’s all they had. “You had a nail to hang your clothes on. You didn’t have closets in the house; hardly had a drawer to put anything in,” she continued.
Everyone walked to school, whether it was three city blocks in town or three miles in the country.
“I got 10 cents a day for lunch at school,” recalls Betty Moseley, 87, whose family moved to Chattanooga when she was seven. “I loved the soup, that’s all I ate, and a glass of water. So then I would save the nickel and for a nickel at the general store you could get a cone.” She smiles. “And it was good ice cream and I’d eat that walking home.”
Since it wasn’t possible to have large gardens and livestock in the city, and supermarkets weren’t yet in existence, city residents went to small “homestores” around town, as well as farmer’s markets where in-season produce was purchased by the bushel.
Women then spent hours canning and pressure sealing vegetables and fruit to last their families through the winter. There were no freezers or refrigerators to preserve things, and fresh produce was not available year-round.
“Through the week you didn’t have the good bacon, you had the streaked meat,” explains Marr, who says her mother frequently made things like cornbread, biscuits, beans and potatoes.
“They made a world of things out of potatoes," agrees Moseley. “We had a lot of potatoes.” On the other hand, farmers like the Wilke family had neither access to, nor money for, store-bought food. They ate what their farm produced.
“We raised chickens and hogs and cattle and we would butcher our hogs in the fall of the year and put the meat in five-gallon crocks, then put lard over the top and it would keep and we could eat on that till the summer,” says Wilke.
A big garden was planted in the spring and summer for vegetables, and when the butchered meat ran out in early Fall his father would shoot rabbits to sustain the family till November when they would begin butchering again. They often ran out of other things, too.
“In the spring we would run out of jelly,” says Wilke. “So we’d either take lard on our bread or we could take flour and mother would mix flour and water together and smear that on there.”
About the only foods they purchased in town were flour, sugar, cornmeal and coffee.
Family and Holidays
Stores weren’t open on Sundays which were reserved for church and family time. “You had to go to church every Sunday,” says Wilke. “That was a must.” Families fortunate enough to have a car would use it on Sundays to visit neighbors or relatives after services.
“That’s what you did,” says Marr. “You didn’t have all this entertainment stuff. We would go across Suck Creek Mountain to my grandmother’s house. We had picnics at Sequatchie Cove, we played outside.”
Holidays were the same—focused more on being together with family than on giving and receiving gifts.
“Nobody brought gifts because you didn’t have money to buy gifts,” says Wilke. “We got roller skates because they were cheap and we had sidewalks,” recollects Betty Moseley.
“That’s what we’d get too,” adds her husband of 72 years, Ross Moseley, 91. “Either that or a wind-up train. I knew better than to wish for much.”
Getting a doll for Christmas was “big time” adds Betty, smiling at the memory. “Birthdays weren’t a big deal either,” says Marr. And since Thanksgiving meant a day off of school, Wilke chuckles as he recalls his dad seeing the holiday as an opportunity for his eight children to shuck a lot of corn.
The War
Though families didn’t have much, when World War II broke out the whole country rallied around the war effort and were eager to find ways to contribute.
“Everybody was wanting victory,” recalls Wilke. “Nobody wanted to lose the war.”
Citizens bought government bonds or stamps so that the government would have cash. In the cities metal was collected to use in the war effort, and Marr’s family took an old water heater from their yard to contribute.
“I remember us being excited to be able to do something,” she says.
The nation was united and sought ways to sacrifice and serve to ensure the country had money and resources to win the war. Ross Moseley volunteered for the Navy when he was merely 17, needing his mother’s signature to even enlist.
“All the young men wanted to go,” responds his wife Betty. Her mother worked at the T&T factory making ammunition and her father worked in Oak Ridge, coming home only every other weekend.
“They could not mention anything about what they did,” she says of the place where the atomic bomb was being built. A teenager at the time, her main memory of life during the war was not going anywhere and having no entertainment.
Helping Others
In this time before systems like government assistance and insurance, there was a strong sense of community and helping others.
“If you was in distress, family and neighbors would help, and when you had a whole lot of work to do the neighbors always helped and you would help them,” Wilke says. “You wouldn’t keep track of how many hours you’d help them, you just helped them.”
“I can remember people coming to our door hungry and we’d give ‘em food. We’d share coal with our neighbor,” says Marr.
“When dad came home from Oak Ridge after the war, the only job he could get was at a liquor store and he was ashamed to take it, but he did,” responds Betty Moseley. “The owner bought him a car so he could get back and forth.”
This community-minded generation valued helping each other and contributing to the collective. Times were lean, yet they were willing to sacrifice not only for their country, but also for each other without expecting anything in return.
Love and Marriage
The war was eventually won and attentions were turned back home to love and marriage. Ross and Betty Moseley met before the war and wrote letters back and forth while he served in the Navy. They married when they were 17 and 19, eloping to nearby Georgia since she was underage in Tennessee.
It was the same for Charles and Anna Marr. “We didn’t have a wedding, we were 18,” she says. Hugo Wilke met his wife Ruth thanks to a friend who told him about her and insisted that he should “get after her.” Not because she was beautiful (though she was), or intelligent or wealthy, but because “she was a hard worker”, and in those days in the country there was no higher commendation.
These young husbands worked hard to support their families, working two and three jobs from sunup to sundown.
“Farmers always told me to work hard, work hard. I got that brought up in me,” explained Wilke. Looking back, he’s grateful he did.
Ross Moseley worked from dawn till dusk too, providing for his family. “I just learned by doing,” he says. He became a builder and eventually installed their first shower. “I’ll never forget our first shower,” says Betty. “Oh that was livin’! I didn’t know about washing your hair, I’d always done it in the lavatory.”
Spouses relied on each other and marriage was for life. “He never did care what I bought,” smiles Betty, explaining the secret to their lasting marriage. “We didn’t buy much because we didn’t have the money, but I was free to get what I needed.” For her part, she kept their home tidy and clean.
Though much has changed and evolved in our world, the values this great generation hold dear are still worthy of honoring. Perhaps the nostalgic holiday season is the perfect time to take a look back at their legacy and honor their sacrifices. Why not take time to sit down and hear a few stories about the way it was.
Do it now, while you still can.