What My Grandma LaVelle Did During WWII By Kelsey Grade 4 Valley View Elementary

The beginning of the war. Grandma LaVelle was living in Texas. She was 15 years old. Before that she lived in California, but everyone thought the Japanese would invade California, so they moved to Texas. The girls in economics class sold a flag that had 48 stars. Each star took a whole yard of material. It covered the side of a three story courthouse building!

During the war: The clothes that she wore were dresses, skirts, slack suits and blouses. In her gym class they wore white shirts and white pants. She had to do P.E. every day. Man, if I had Math and P.E. every single day, I would be running the track EVERY DAY. They played a lot of baseball, volleyball, and basketball.

Here are pictures of Grandma

When there was a shortage of nylon for stockings, she didn’t wear makeup on her legs like some people did. She didn’t wear stockings until she got married. She entered nurse’s training right after she got out of high school. She wanted to be a navy nurse because the uniforms were so beautiful; they were navy blue, and the cape was lined with red taffeta. They looked really sharp on the nurses. She really wanted to be a pilot, but she wasn’t old enough.

More of what she did Because of her interest in flying, she used to read about Jackie Coffer and admired the fact that Jackie would bring planes from the U.S. to Europe and England. They had women who were teaching some of the other pilots how to fly! Woman also went to the shipyards and took jobs that the men normally worked after they were drafted. The woman had to work in the steel industry and that is where “Rosy the Riveter” came in. (I told her that Ms. Drum was “Rosy the Riveter” on Halloween.) The women usually stayed at home until WWII started when they were needed outside the home.

More of what she did during WWII (Continued.) People wanted the women to stay home and have babies and not work outside of the house, but when the war came along everyone was needed to build planes, and ships. They also stopped the manu- facturing of cars for regular people so they could make jeeps for the war. (They needed the steel.)

Grandpa Dick comes into Grandma’s life. Right after she got married, on April 3, 1945, Victory in Europe happened on April 25. Our Grandpa Dick was in the service. He was stationed outside of Texas; it was a big, big field.When they would go downtown, they couldn’t go anywhere because many navy men were in the way.

Grandma and Grandpa While they were passing through the crowd, this man walked up to her and kissed her right smack on the lips!!!!!!!!!!! And it was a total stranger. Then grandpa Dick showed him a look that said this was his girl. She had also joined the nurse’s Cadette corps. She was married and the school had a rule that if you are married before your 6 months of training, you would have to quit. They didn’t want the girls to be married because they would probably have babies.

Some fun stuff The roller rinks were popular back then, they would listen to rock and roll music such as: “The White Cliffs of Dover” and “Don’t Sit Under the Apple Tree With Anyone But Me”. She also remembered “You Ain’t Got That Thing When You Ain’t Got That Swing”.

Some cool stuff She wasn’t allowed to go to dances, so her interests were movies, roller skating, and homework. She was too young to have a regular job; her job was to get through high school. She worked in the summer, which would be through June, July, and August. Her school would start the day after labor day.

Before she was old enough to work, she would clean houses and baby-sit some people’s children. She was living right across the street from her school with a family. She took care of a family that had a mother, father, and daughter. She got up, made breakfast, and went to school. In the afternoon she came home and made lunch and then went back to school. Then she would come back home and make dinner. She would have to wash the dishes, and you know that they didn’t have automatic dishwashers back then so she had to hand wash the dishes. There was some- thing wrong with the woman. My grandma doesn’t really know what was wrong with her, she said maybe it was a nervous breakdown. The woman couldn't take care of the family.

Some more cool stuff. And they would dry their clothes on a clothes line. It smelled so much better than the drying machine. The clothes would be dry in about a half hour because the air was dry in Texas. There is always a sandstorm every year in Texas. Once when a bunch of clothes were drying on the clothesline there was a sandstorm so all of the girls ran out and grabbed all the clothes, and ran inside, closed the windows, shut the door, and closed the shades.

Some more cool stuff. (continued) She remembers selling savings bonds and she remembered having to save copper, tin, newspapers, aluminum and iron. They even saved the foil layer of wrappers from gum! She also remembered her grandpa in the hospital all that time. Her aunt would save up gas stamps and they would drive them to the hospital and visit her grandpa. It took about 6 hours to get there.

Also these things When she heard that the atom bomb was dropped on Japan, she hoped it would be the end of the war. She, her friends, and family had no idea how horrible the devastation was until later on. Here is a picture with my sister and me by the atomic bomb >>>>> (We were in California.)