World War 2 History, up close and personal

Before I get into the reason for sharing this address, let me get this information set up for you: The topic is World War 2 Memorabilia and Honoring the memory of the sacrifices of the everyday men and women who served our nation in its time of great danger. The address below is a museum being set up for that purpose.

Townsend C. Young VFW Post

27 Burlington St., Gloucester City, NJ 08030

856-456-7135

856-456-3412

Ed Whalens

Recently a relative and friend of my Godfather, George Neal Schmidt, known to me as Uncle Neal, got in touch and offered me some personal mementos of his. He had passed away a few years ago. I was happy to have the mementos and to revisit my memories of this most beloved Godfather.

Uncle Neal was an extraordinarily kind, patient, calm and polite man. He was very clean and always wore freshly starched and ironed shirts and Old Spice aftershave. I remember telling him that I wished I could grow up faster so I could marry him. But time isn't so flexible. I grew up and moved away and he moved away and got old.

Neal was my father's best friend and a boyhood through Navy pal. After they came home from WW2, they stayed close in touch and Neal joined us for weekends in our new home in the suburbs of Maple Shade, NJ.

Neal suffered a horrendous tragedy. Both my father and Neal were engaged to be married, and my father married my mother, but the week before Neal's wedding, his fiancee' Mary Cook and her family were killed in a catastrophic accident with a trolley car. They were buried on the day that should have been the wedding. Neal never really recovered from this tragedy and he never dated or got engaged or married again. He seemed to retreat into a quiet, solitary world of records and memories.

A year or two before his death, my father tasked my youngest sister and me with locating Neal and visiting him. He had moved in with the family of his lost fiancee, somewhere out near Shomong, and he was in his last days in a Catholic nursing home called St. Marys. We visited him there. He was his old shy, quiet and kindly self, but very frail. He died not much longer after that visit as did my father.

My sister and I went to Neal's funeral and that is how the distant relative/friend of Neal's, Mary Cravels, came to have the memorabilia she was offering me.

A large brown envelope arrived with photos and postcards and a phto copy of the article about the accident. I ordered a scrapbook style photo book to put the items and and then I began to think about what to do with this in the future.

Soon, in 3 weeks I will be 80 and like my friends, I often ponder what will happen to the family heirlooms and photo albums I have become the repository for. I have my Grandmother Mabel's diary in which she recounts the suicide of her twin, Ella, who suffered from dementia. I have her mother's 100 year old sewing machine and my Grandfather's deck chair from his years as a Merchant seaman. And now, I have Neal's discharge and his carefully saved postcards and cards from his loved fiancee and his wartime buddies.

There have been plenty of articles about "You kids don't want your old stuff" and Swedish Death Cleaning. But I am a history buff and these things tell the story of the lives of ordinary people, and they are irreplaceable historical artifacts. Increasingly, however, our culture is moving away from history and reverence and respect for it. The destruction of the entire East Wing of the White House this week is a perfect example of that, as was the destruction of the historic Rose Garden of the White HOuse.

Antique shops are going out of business. One of my favorite, rather large second hand book stores went under recently, Murphy's Book Loft, and a treasure trove of magazines from the 20th century went with it.

The world is moving into a transient future where everything is trash and easy to replace quickly, so nothing has much value. People lead electronic lives now.

With this in mind, and remembering the fascinating scrapbook kept by Marie Southwick, a member of a Seniors Group that I had founded and run for 7 years, I started looking around for a place that would house and care for WW 2 memorabilia.

Marie Southwick's album was kept by her mother-in-law and it was filled with ration cards, coupons, news articles, photographs and all sorts of evocative items of daily life during the 1940's. She too had wondered what would happen to the scrapbook when she was gone.

My search of google turned up the VFW Post listed above, and I hope to visit there one day soon. There was a news article in the Courier Post about the VFW Post and Museum and I recognized the name of the man I had met at the Gloucester City Historical Society which had at one point been located on Kings St. in Gloucester City and may still be there. I know they fell on hard times. It isn't easy to get volunteers, as I can attest after spending my retirement up until my disability prevented it, in volunteering at half a dozen local historical sites.

I hope to visit if I can find someone to go with me and I hope they can provide a home for Marie's scrapbook and my album. I will let you know what I find out.

Happy Trails, wrightj45@yahoo.com