Larry Rafferty was born May 30, 1932 in Blackpool, England, where he grew up against the backdrop of World War Two. Larry has many engaging memories of the time, from the Blitz to the rations and Blackpool FC! Larry grew up in Blackpool and Manchester, returning to the latter after the bombings had subsided. His […]
Raffaella DeSimone was born in Italy in 1943, in the midst of the Second World War. As her parents were farmers, and there was no work, the family relocated to France, and then to Canada. The family arrived in Halifax, at Pier 21, and they began to adapt to their new country, reaching out to family […]
Clarence Singleton was born January 30, 1949 in Sumter, South Carolina. He grew up in the south of the era, attending segregated schools and participating in school nuclear attack drills that were prevalent in the Cold War. He played sports and worked the fields and chafed to get out of his small community. Asked why […]
John Trickett was born August 16, 1937 in Sale, England, where he grew up alongside his older sisters. Sale is part of the Greater Manchester area, so when John was growing up during the war he experienced the Blitz, and he has memories of the shelters and gas masks and rationing – and of the […]
Joseph Quinlan was born September 30, 1933 in St. John, New Brunswick. He grew up there in a large family, against the backdrop of the Depression years and World War Two. His father was a lumberjack who also built houses, and Joseph recalls uncles and family friends who served during the war. Joseph was in […]
William (Bill) Georgov was born April 22, 1926 in Newark, New Jersey. His parents were Slovak and Serbian and had emigrated to the U.S. via Canada. Once in Newark, Bill’s father owned and operated a barber shop. Bill attended school in Newark and did all the normal things for a teenage boy as the Great […]
Colin Lens Wagener was born December 2, 1917 in Adelaide, Australia. He grew up there alongside his sisters, graduating high school just in time for the Great Depression as he recalls. The war came in 1939, and Colin and several friends decided to join up – only Colin would come through unscathed. He ended up […]
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 […]
Terry Hill was born March 25, 1944 in Toronto, though the family relocated to Lake Wilcox just to the north of the city shortly after Terry’s birth. Another move to Toronto followed, and that is where Terry went to high school (York Memorial), though he did not graduate. Terry’s father originally came from Finland, and […]
Ross Meador was born August 23, 1954 in Mexico. Ross recalls that his parents were liberal in their outlooks, moving between Texas and California in his early years. Ross graduated from high school in 1972 and while there he witnessed the countercultural movement that was at that time enveloping much of the United States. Ross […]
Richard “Dick” Inlow was born November 21, 1924 in Detroit, Michigan. His father was a Great War veteran who came home looking to make his fortune, and that ambition took him to Detroit, where he was quite successful in the “Roaring 20s”. The end of that decade brought the crash and the beginning of the […]
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; […]
Mike McGlennon was born December 15, 1957 in Ottawa. His father served in the Canadian Forces (CAF) in the postwar era, first in intelligence and later in the military police, so Mike and his siblings grew up in military bases attending the base schools. He recalls a childhood based on change and movement; his parents […]
Sid Levit was born in Philadelphia July 17, 1924, and he has spent a good portion of his life in New Jersey. He attended Hebrew School, where he said he was not a good student. Sid said all families were affected by the Great Depression: he recalls that his father lost his sales job, but […]
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 […]
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 Garrity was born January 27, 1923 in Jamestown, Newfoundland. Her father was a bookkeeper for a logging company and her mother was a teacher who ran the post office out of the family home in that small fishing village. Jean grew up alongside her six siblings during the Great Depression, which she remembers were […]
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 […]
David Barkun was born June 1, 1923 in Montreal. He grew up in the city’s east end, the son of immigrants from Russia who had to Canada in the 1920s to escape antisemitism. David recalls growing up in an English-speaking enclave surrounded by largely French neighbourhoods – and that the two communities did not mix. […]
Elmer Friesen was born March 3, 1922 in Saskatchewan, and he grew up there in the town of Aberdeen, alongside his nine siblings. His father was a teacher, but he developed eye trouble, he had to retire, and the family moved to their grandfather’s homestead, where Albert’s father organized the farm. Albert quit school at […]
Phil Rutherford was born December 2, 1949 in Sydney. His father was a British sailor in World War Two: he joined the Royal Navy and saw the world, fighting in both the Atlantic and Pacific. Wanting something different after the war he settled in Australia and married, choosing to move into the countryside when Phil […]
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 […]
Martin Jones – Marty – was born May 30, 1925 in Lamont, Alberta. He grew up in a large family against the backdrop of the Great Depression, leaving school after Grade 10 to join the military – “we had business to attend to”, as Marty remembers. He was training with the Battleford Light Infantry in […]