Wayne Pitt was born November 7, 1947 in London, Ontario. His parents had immigrated to Canada from Ireland and England; his father was an armourer/gunsmith in the Canadian Army in World War Two, and while overseas he met the woman who would become his war bride. They returned to Canada to start their family, with […]
Kenneth Chatto was born March 19, 1928 in Rockland, Maine. Growing up in that coastal area, he did all the normal things for a boy of that time, including fishing and sailing in Penobscot Bay; he also hiked and joined the Sea Scouts. During WWII Kenneth’s dad was an air warden who enforced blackout restrictions. […]
Doug Butler was born December 19, 1924, just outside Winchester, Virginia. He grew up there in a large farm family – ten siblings including him! The family was in fact able to endure the Great Depression in part because of the food they produced on that farm. Pearl Harbor would be the event that defined […]
Jack Einstein was born July 8, 1924 in Radford, Virginia. Jack’s great-grandfather was Moses Einstein, who had emigrated from Ulm, Germany. He eventually ended up in Virginia after a few years in New York. Moses was an uncle of the famous Albert Einstein, and that makes Jack his third cousin. Moses married into a Christian […]
Fred Nungesser was born September 5, 1925 in Union City, N.J. He was the only child in his family; Fred’s father had served with the US Army Engineers in the First World War, and he went on to be a bus driver in north New Jersey, while Fred’s mother was a homemaker and embroiderer. Fred […]
Donald – “Dugan” – Cottingham was born December 25, 1924, in Tilbury, Ontario. His father was involved in war work, making tarps for the army, which the teenaged Dugan helped to deliver. He and many of his friends had joined the Kent Regiment militia while in high school, and when many of them went on […]
George Dettling was born November 20, 1922 in the small northern town of Friedenstahl, in the Peace River country of northwestern Alberta, where he grew up in a large family of nine children. George left school after Grade 8, and he began working in the community to support himself and the large family. George recalls […]
Gerrard “Gerry” Becigneul was born February 1, 1932 in Sandwich (now Windsor), Canada during the Great Depression. His mother was born in France, while his father was born in Lac-Megantic, Quebec. Gerry had three brothers and five sisters, and several saw survive in World War Two. He attended a bilingual high school which he despised; […]
Charlie Rose was born February 28, 1926 in the Springfield Ozarks area of Kansas City, Missouri. He was the oldest of eight children. His father was an American veteran of the Great War who served in France, and once back in K.C. he was a streetcar driver. Charlie attended a rural school when he was […]
Joan Fuller (nee Belmar) was born January 15, 1918 in Osterley, England. Her parents were both born in St. Lucia but had received their schooling in England, and when Joan’s father received a job with the Colonial Office the family returned to England. Joan had a happy childhood growing up west of London, even though […]
Bruce Cook was born September 23, 1925 in Swansea, South Carolina. He lived a simple life on a sharecropping farm, raised by his uncle. His family name was Smith, but Bruce took on his uncle’s surname as his mother had been admitted to hospital when he was just 2 months old, and Bruce’s father sent […]
Frank Dunn was born December 29, 1951 in Stuyvesant Town, in lower Manhattan. He grew up in that urban environment, attending Catholic school and running with a gang for a time. He recalls the big events that punctuated the era, from the Kennedy assassination to the duck and cover drills to the emergence of Vietnam […]
Frank Arminio was born August 23, 1946 in Newark, New Jersey. His father was a World War two veteran who had served as an MP in the Philippines and Okinawa, and his grandfather had served in the Italian army in the Great War, so Frank has a military tradition in his family. Frank remembers that […]
Gordon Bennett was born August 1, 1932 in Toronto. He grew during the war years, when he attended Riverdale Collegiate. Gordon chose to join the army himself when he turned 18, in 1951. The Korean War was underway at this time, and Gordon went overseas in early 1952, when he was 19. He was assigned […]
Addison Sheckler – known as Cal – was born April 27, 1923 in Lehighton, Pennsylvania. He started life there and later moved to Philadelphia, where he grew up against the backdrop of the Great Depression. He did all the normal things for a young boy in that time, going to school and the movies. Cal […]
Alan Shapiro was born October 16, 1924 in Philadelphia, where he grew up in the Overbrook neighborhood. Alan recalls that as he grew up he was asthmatic, and he moved into his teen years he developed a keen interest in flying. In fact when he was 17 he went to join the US Army Air […]
Jean Crozier (nee Willis) was born June 24, 1922 in Toronto. She grew up in the Mt. Pleasant neighbourhood, where she attended Northern Vocational School and learned to be a stenographer – and that’s where she was when learned that Canada had declared war. Her father had a good job with the railroad, so the […]
John Homan was born January 5, 1924 in Parlin, New Jersey. His parents had emigrated from England in the 1920s, where John’s father had served in the Royal Navy in the Great War. Once in the U.S., they settled in Maine before moving to the Garden State. John grew up there alongside his three siblings […]
Marcel Sauve was born March 27, 1931 in Montreal. He grew up in Verdun during the war years and when he was old enough he decided to join the Canadian army, going into the Royal 22nd Regiment – or the Van Doos. Marcel made the army his career as he served 24 years and rose […]
Albert Gomberg was born November 29, 1923 in Montreal. His parents emigrated from Russia to escape the antisemitism and pogroms that were prevalent at the time. They emigrated to Halifax and then Montreal, where they lived in the Outremont neighbourhood. They had a large family with seven boys and one girl, of which Albert was […]
Joseph-Albert Ganin was born January 20, 1931 in Montreal. He was raised by his grandmother in Ste-Cecile-de-Masham, a small town where several of his uncles also lived. School ended early for Joseph – he did not in fact attend past Grade 3. The family relocated to Ottawa, and Joseph grew up there during the war […]
John Quinesso was born January 24, 1926 in Vineland, N.J. He grew up in that small town, and he was quite the athlete, even getting a tryout with the Brooklyn Dodgers. John was just starting high school when the attack on Pearl Harbour took place, and he did not have a sense of how it […]
John Kerr – or Jack – was born June 1, 1925 in Chatham, Ontario. His father was a Great War veteran who also served in the Second World War, and his grandfather was a judge, so the family grew up in relative affluence, insulated from the effects of the Great Depression. The war of course […]
Pierre Baillarge was born April 22, 1938 in Les Cedres, Quebec. His grandfather served in the Great War, and his own father was in the Merchant Navy during the war, doing the important work of keeping Britain supplied, and when his ship was sunk he returned home. Later he worked at the Soulanges Canal outside […]
Jacques Vezina was born October 22, 1925 in the St-Henri district of Montreal. He grew up in that mixed neighbourhood in a large family, with four sisters and two older brothers. Jacques’ father was a bank manager – a quiet man as Jacques recalls. When the war came Jacques’ two older brothers enlisted in the […]
Art Newell was born November 11, 1925 in Struthers, Ohio. He grew up there against the backdrop of the Great Depression, working in a local steel mill alongside his father, a Great War veteran who became a local labor leader. Pearl Harbor would change the fate of Art’s generation: Art’s older brother and an uncle […]
Richard Keep was born September 28, 1924 in Sanborn, Minnesota. The family moved to Iowa when he was two, and he grew up on a farm there with his two younger brothers, not far from the small town of Delta. The family lived through the difficult days of the Great Depression, though as Richard recalls […]
Tim Kiniry was born November 15, 1921 in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, and that’s where he spent his first two years, though he really grew up in New Jersey. Tim had four sisters and a younger brother, and they all grew up during the Depression, attending grammar school – Tim’s education ended at the 8th grade. During […]
Lloyd Brown was born August 18, 1923 in Moose Jaw, Saskatchewan, and he grew up in the nearby community of Mortlach in his early years. The family later relocated to Edmonton, where Lloyd left school after Grade 8, taking work at McGavin’s Bakery. He worked there until 1942, when he turned 19 and joined the […]
Les Schrenk was born November 16, 1923 in Long Prairie, Minnesota. He grew up on a small dairy farm, milking cows, shoveling manure, and bailing hay among other farm chores. He attended a one room schoolhouse and graduated from high school. He had an older sister; his older brother served on a B-24 in the […]