The Red Cross Home Service -- A Vital Support to Families Back Home During WWII

By Pamela S. Meyers

While reading through a digital copy of my hometown’s weekly newspaper published during Homefront-WWII days, I came across several articles that recounted services rendered to local families of military personal by the American Red Cross Home Service Corp. I’d not been aware if this vital service provided by the American Red Cross, but as I searched through copies of the paper I found Home Service mentioned often. 

 The American Red Cross (ARC)has a number of areas called volunteer corps that serve Americans at home when the U.S. is at war. Every chapter of the ARC that existed during WWII had a Home Service department that assisted the families of military members who were stationed overseas during the war. The website “World War II and the American Red Cross”, lists some of the functions of the Home Service Department as: 

 • Consultation and guidance in personal and family problems. 

 • Communication between service personnel and family members.

 • Information and help with government regulations, pensions, and other benefits. 

 • Financial assistance, in the form of loans and grants based on need. 

 • Furnishing the armed forces with reports to 

   aid military authorities in making discharge 

   and furlough decisions. 

 The site also states: During the war years, the Home Service handled almost 18 million cases, participated in 42 million communications between troops and families, and provided over $38 million in financial assistance. 

 At the local level in Lake Geneva, the Home Service Department provided a broad spectrum of services from notifying a military member of the death of a loved one to even sending flowers to a military member’s sweetheart on Valentine’s Day. During the death or a very serious illness of a soldier’s loved one who was responsible for the family farm, a temporary furlough to enable him to return home to assist on the farm was granted. 

Another incident occurred involving a young man who had been estranged from his mother for 19 years. His mother asked the Home Service Department at the local ARC for assistance and her son was located where he was serving overseas and a joyful reunion via letters occurred. 

 One very important task assigned to Home Service during wartime was establishing a connection between U.S. military personnel who had been captured and taken prisoner and were currently POWs. The International Red Cross will sometimes get involved in this, as well as the assistance of humanitarian aid workers. It was often tricky because the POW camps were located in enemy territory and not all of those POW camps abided by the Geneva Convention that outlines humanitarian care that must be provided to POWs under their authority.

Of course, the information I located on Home Service made its way into my Homefront WWII novel. I love writing historical novels because I learn so many unique things through my research. 

Have you ever volunteered for an organization such as the Red Cross? 

Pam Meyers has been writing since she was a child and kept a diary at age eight. She's published a number of historical novels set in her hometown of Lake Geneva, Wisconsin, along with several contemporary novels. She can be found on Facebook and her website at www.pamelasmeyers.com .

She makes her home in northern Illinois with her two rescue cats. She's only about an hour away from Lake Geneva and you'll often find her there nosing around for new story ideas.

Resources:  

Lake Geneva Regional News; March 25, 1943, edition

American Red Cross Website: https://www.redcross.org/content/dam/redcross/National/history-wwii.pdf

World War 2 Homefront - How People at Home Were Encouraged to Support the War Effort

 

By Pamela S. Meyers

My upcoming novel, Rose Harbor, is set in home front-World War 2, and I’m very grateful that my parents kept a few artifacts from that time period. These include some unused ration stamps and a little booklet published by the U.S. Office of Civil Defense, called “What Can I Do? The Citizen’s Handbook for War.” 

After 1941, like almost every able-bodied man, my dad tried to enlist, but because he had a history of kidney stones, he was rejected. This little booklet was written for people like him who couldn’t physically go to war but could still help. 

The first part of the booklet focuses on several topics regarding what everybody can do everywhere: 

1) Protect Ourselves – Use black-out curtains, know where your warden post is located, etc. 

2) Civilian Mobilization – Be ready to contribute in the ways described in the booklet. 

3) Conservation – Get along with less and take good care of what you have so it will last. 

4) Salvage – Saving things you can’t use and sending them back to the smelter to be remade. 

5) War Budget – Save money and invest regularly in war bonds, save to pay your taxes. 

6) Health – Take good care of yourself and avoid getting sick as best you can. 

7) Information – Understand what’s going on by listening to the news and reading newspapers. 

8) V-Homes – A home should be saving, salvaging, conserving, and converting. A V-home award is a badge of honor for families who have made themselves into a fighting unit on the home front. 

The other half of the booklet lists various occupations that require certain skills and how people who work in those occupations can be used at the home front to apply these skills to certain volunteer positions. These are broken down into categories such as industry and trades, business, professionals (which involves teachers, clergy, medical, librarians, lawyers, and creatives like musicians, artists, editors, and writers. Another section focuses on farmworkers, and another on what women can do such as converting their home lastly is a short section on what children can do. 

The back cover contains an index of occupations and the page numbers that describe what those in certain occupations can do to help in the war effort. 

 I immediately looked at what writers could do and I would have been directed to the Information segment to write publicity items, war news, instructions for rationing, and education in war aims. 

 A manager of a movie theater can help by showing documentaries that inform about the war, including the work done in the factories converted to produce ammo, guns, and other weapons. They were also responsible for providing a few hours of relaxation for those who are pulling double-shifts in the factories, etc. 

 From a novelist’s perspective, this booklet has provided valuable information such as what my characters who were on the home front could do based on their skill sets. I’ve heard over and over again about how the entire country pulled together in whatever way they could to help win the war. That period of time wasn’t called the Greatest Generation for nothing. 

What artifacts from another time has your family saved through the years?

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In the historical fiction series, Newport of the West, Lake Geneva, Wisconsin's rich history is told through a fictional family who, having been displaced by the Great Chicago Fire, moved from Chicago to the beautiful Geneva Lake. Follow the generations of the family through the decades in this 4-book series. The final book, Rose Harbor, releases May 2021.

Pamela S. Meyers was raised in Lake Geneva, Wisconsin, the setting for her historical novels. 

She is currently working on Rose Harbor, a World War 2 home front novel.

She lives in northeast Illinois with her two rescue cats, is active in her church, and enjoys jaunts north over the state line into her native Wisconsin.

Her books are sold locally in the Lake Geneva area and on Amazon. 

Lake Geneva, Wisconsin's Own Matinee Idol

Matinee idol isn't a term that we hear said very often, but back in the 1920s, 30s, 40s and 50s it was often said of handsome young movie stars who made their female fans' pulses raise. Names like Rudolph Valentino, Errol Flynn, and Clark Cable come to mind when thinking of the 1920s and 30s. And stars like Van Johnson and Tyrone Power charmed movie fans in the 40s. But what you might not know is that in the 1950s my hometown had it's very own matinee idol. I didn't know it myself until recently when the Geneva Lake Museum set up a display about him.

Announcement in Lake Geneva paper
that he'd been hired to teach at the high school.

After I learned that in the early fifties Kerwin Mathews, a English teacher at Lake Geneva High School became a movie star, I began going through the weekly editions of the Lake Geneva Regional News to track him down.

Every fall, the paper printed the names of new teachers hired for the new school year, and I started there. I was beginning to think I'd been given wrong name of the actor when I noticed in 1951, a Verne Mathews was hired to teach speech and drama. Of course, Kerwin Mathews was his screen name.

A screen grab from the preview of 5 Against the House

Source: IMDb https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0048077/

His first credited role with Columbia was in "5 Against the House." Among his cast-mates were Bryan Keith and a new starlet by the name of Kim Novak. Not bad for a young guy just starting out.

Mathews went on to star in a number of films, then segued into doing adventure movies where they pioneered the special effect of incorporating cartoon characters into the scenes to interact with the actors.

The last mention of Kerwin Mathews
in the local paper, telling people his new movie was
coming to the local drive-in theater.

Mathews traveled the globe to different filming assignments and went on to various roles on television. He retired from acting in 1978 and settled in San Francisco where he ran a clothing and antique store. He died at age 81.

But, he was not forgotten by his alma mater at Janesville High School in Janesville, Wisconsin. They named a street next to the school Kerwin Mathews Court.

Do you know any famous people who have come from your hometown?




Sources: IMBd, Wikimedia, and Lake Geneva Regional News

Pamela S. Meyers has been writing since age eight when she was given a diary. She loves telling stories about her home area of Lake Geneva, Wisconsin. When she's not nosing around there for new story ideas, she's at home in northern Illinois with her two rescue cats.

Her latest release is Tranquility Point, Book 3 in her historical series set in Lake Geneva--where else?

Irish Woods - The First Illinoisans to Escape to Wisconsin

By Pamela S. Meyers

There's a saying that on St. Patrick's Day everyone is Irish. I'm not certain of the origin of that adage but I'm happy to say through having my DNA analyzed, I actually am part Irish. A very very small part. That was a huge surprise to me.

I'm not sure when I first learned of the Irish enclave that sits west of the small town of Lake Geneva, Wisconsin, my hometown. I think it was about the same time as I was researching for my novel Safe Refuge. Even though I grew up there I'd not been aware of the area until then. Once I learned about it, I knew I had to include it in my novel.

The Great Chicago Fire was the strong catalyst that drove many of the Chicago wealthy north to Wisconsin and Geneva Lake to buy up government land that bordered the lakeshore. But, before that cataclysmic event occurred in October 1871, and before the Civil War separated the country into the North and South, the Wisconsin Central Railroad decided to run railroad tracks from Genoa, Wisconsin at the state line with Illinois to Whitewater, Wisconsin. (I have seen varied reports as to where the RR track began. Some have said Elgin, IL.) 

The railroad hired a large number of Irish immigrant men to lay down the tracks. Newly landed in the U.S., the men were eager to earn good money and had planned to return to the city with their pay in their pockets and find new work to support their families. But when they came to the end of the line in the small village of Lake Geneva, the railroad paid them their wages but didn't provide transportation back to Illinois. And since it would be a while before the train would start running over those tracks, they were at loose ends. 

At the same time, the U.S. government had just released good prospective farmland just west of Lake Geneva along what is now U.S. Highway 50. With their wages in their pockets, many of the immigrants decided to stay in Wisconsin and bought up those available plots of land. They went to work, clearing trees and building homes, then sent for their families. It wasn't long before the heavily wooded area became known as Irish Woods.

St. Francis de Sales Roman Catholic church as it
appears today. (Resource the church Facebook page)

These were hard-working people who over the years have contributed much to the town of Lake Geneva and to the west, the smaller village of Williams Bay. Many of the farms still exist today, some passed down from generation to generation. But the farms aren't the only mark these industrious Irish people left on the area. They also worked other trades such as construction and many had a hand in building the wood frame Roman Catholic Church that sat at the top of a hill, dubbed Catholic Hill, on the east side of Lake Geneva. The wooden church building was eventually replaced in the 1880s with a brick building, likely built by the next generation of Irish immigrants.

Woods School after the wood frame building was replaced with a brick building. They also built the stone fence. The current school is larger and the original building is used still today.

In addition to the church, Irish Woods residents also built a wood-frame one-room schoolhouse for their children at the corner of Snake Road and Highway 50. Over time, the wooden schoolhouse was moved off the property to a nearby farm and a brick schoolhouse was built. Today Woods School is much larger than one room and serves as a feeder school to several local high schools since open enrollment is the norm there. I first wrote about Woods School back on April 4, 2018. You can read that post by clicking here. 

If you were to glance through the names of folks who were born and raised in Lake Geneva, you would see a lot of surnames of the original Irish immigrants who decided to make the Lake Geneva area their new home. Several were my high school classmates, but I never realized back then their unique backstory.

If you are in the Lake Geneva, Wisconsin area on St. Patrick's Day 2020, you might be interested in coming to the Geneva Lake Museum to hear my presentation on Irish Woods and the things I learned about the enclave through my research.

Photo Credits: Woods School: Wisconsin Historical Society  

Pamela S. Meyers was raised in Lake Geneva, Wisconsin but has lived on both coasts of the U.S. before returning to the Midwest where she makes her home in Northeast Illinois with her two rescue cats, a short hop to her native Wisconsin where she can often be found nosing around for new story ideas. Her third book in her historical series set in Lake Geneva releases in May and she is working on Book 4. 

The Lake Geneva Mailboat - Delivering Mail Since 1916

Mail Jumper Returning to the Boat
Source. Personal Collection,
Ane Mulligan Photographer

If you’ve been reading my posts here over the years, you know I’m from a small town in southeastern Wisconsin called Lake Geneva. At the time of the great Chicago Fire, the city’s wealthy who lost homes and businesses came to Geneva Lake and purchased lakeshore property for their families. Soon, beautiful Victorian mansions and a few homes of other styles began popping up, and the area became known as The Newport of the West. A play on the fancy homes the wealthy had built on the seashore in Newport, Rhode Island.

As the lakeshore became more populated, it created a problem of how to deliver mail to the homes when many were only accessible by water or very bad roads. The obvious answer was to do so by boat. The Lake Geneva post office wasn’t the first in the country to have mailboat delivery, but it is only one of very few who still do it today. The unique feature of the Lake Geneva mailboat is the that it uses mail jumpers to deliver the mail. Young men and woman leap off the moving boat, race to a mailbox attached to the pier and sprint back to the moving boat and leap on it before it is too far away.

The Walworth servicing the Snug Harbor Estate During the Early Years
Resource: Postcard Collection of P.Meyers Public Domain

The mailboat route was officially established in 1916 and a steam yacht, called The Walworth was designated as the official mailboat. According to Lake Geneva Cruise line’s website, the mail deliveries made during both world wars the mail delivery was the recipients’ only means of contact with the outside world as many likely waited in anticipation of letters from their loved ones stationed in harm’s way.

Walworth II Loading Passengers
Wikipedia Photo

The first Walworth mailboat served for over fifty years and was retired in the 1960s and replaced by a newer Walworth II, which has since undergone a makeover and enlarged. Today the mail jumpers not only deliver the mail but also narrate descriptions of the large mansions, including their histories.

From the very beginning the jumpers were all males, but in the 1970s a female asked to be considered for the job and from then on, both men and women have jumped the mail. In the 1990s a “try out” process was instituted to test the applicants on their physical ability to deliver the mail in this unique way. You may have seen a clip on your evening news highlighting one of these tryouts. If not, here’s a link to check it out.  https://youtu.be/kFh06fZHF5k

Growing up in Lake Geneva,  it was a given that when friends and family came from out of town a mailboat tour of the lake would appear on the agenda. I never tired of it and if girls had been allowed to jump the mail, I’d probably have wanted to try out. I was a good swimmer but I’m not sure I was athletic enough to perform the jumps and would probably have ended up in the lake more often than not. Not that it wouldn’t have been welcome on hot summer days.

Have you ever been to Lake Geneva and taken the mailboat ride? 

Resources: 

Lake Geneva Cruse Line-The Maiboat https://usmailboat.com/

The Riviera - Lake Geneva, Wisconsin's Historical Lakeshore Gem

The Riviera from the Street

This week I was honored to give a presentation at the Geneva Lake Museum on the history of the Riviera, a community building  that sits at the lakefront  in Lake Geneva, Wisconsin. Lake Geneva is my hometown and the setting for three of my published historical novels with more on the way. I had done extensive research on the "Riv," as locals call it, before writing my novel Surprised by Love in Lake Geneva.

To draw tourists to town to enjoy the beautiful lake and town and boost the small town's economy, the city fathers of Lake Geneva decided in January 1932, to sell bonds to finance a new recreation center and ballroom. By March of that year, the first pilings went into the lake bottom to support the new building which does not sit on land but is built out over the water. With lightning speed, the building's Italianate designed exterior was completed by September 1, 1932, and an informal preview of the second-floor ballroom was held. More than 1000 people from all walks of life attended the event, all eager to see what the building looked like inside and to enjoy dancing to the music of Ralph Williams' orchestra. 

The Riviera from the East.

Although the ballroom was not yet fully complete, it was called by a Lake Geneva News Tribune reporter, "Wisconsin’s most beautiful ballroom." And it seemed most people agreed with him.  

Over the years, the Riviera Ballroom hosted many famous entertainers and big bands, including Louie Armstrong who returned on ten consecutive summers during the 1950s. Every weekend, lines of ladies in formals and men in suits and ties formed outside the ballroom entrance. The building wasn’t air-conditioned, but with the windows open and a breeze off the lake, they survived. In addition to the summer entertainment, the local high school used the ballroom for their junior prom for many years. I remember as a child sitting on the grass outside the Riviera and watching the young couples wearing their formals and tuxes arrive for the prom. 

During the 1960s rock and roll greats replaced the big bands and jazz singers at the venue, including Stevie Wonder in 1969. But they began to fade in their allure and the ballroom was then reconfigured into a nightclub called The Top Deck. I personally never saw it during that phase as I was living out of state. But I've been told it was a radical change.  Pop music stars like Chubby Checker, Herman’s Hermits, and the Ides of March (to name a few) played there. 

By 1980, what had once been dubbed the most beautiful ballroom in Wisconsin was showing its age, and the city took over the lease and restored the space back to its original appearance. It’s since been run by the city and has hosted many weddings/wedding receptions and other events, including high school proms. In 1986, it gained Landmark Status and was placed on the National Register of Historic Places.

The author presenting about the Rivera's history
at the Geneva Lake Museum. (Photo courtesy of the Geneva Lake Museum)

When I began researching for my novel, Surprised by Love in Lake Geneva, I used articles from microfilm of the local newspaper at the time the Riviera was constructed. As I read, I became caught up in the excitement of the townspeople over what was taking place at the lakefront. It represented hope during a time when a lot of people were out of work. They knew if they built it, people from Chicago (a two-hour train ride away) would come and enjoy the beautiful lake and beach during the day and dance their feet off at night in the ballroom. Of course, all the while, spending money at restaurants and hotels and keeping the merchants and innkeepers happy. Additionally, the tradesmen who worked on the building while it was under construction saw welcome paychecks that had not been plentiful during that time. It was a new era for the town of Lake Geneva, which is still a popular getaway. I often meet people from far-flung places who tell me they have been to my hometown and what a beautiful place it is.

Have you been to Lake Geneva? Please share if you have. If not, what is a favorite getaway place you enjoy? 

Leave a comment as I will be drawing a name to win a copy of Surprised by Love in Lake Geneva, the 1933 novel I wrote that features the Riviera in the story.

Resources: 

Pictures of Riviera: Old postcards, public domain and owned by the author.

Lake Geneva News Tribune, 1932 and 1933 editions

At the Lake Magazine, June 2019; Once a Storied Ballroom …; 

Anne Morrissy.

Pamela has written most of her life, beginning with her first diary at age eight. Her novels include Surprised by Love in Lake Geneva, Wisconsin and Second Chance Love. Safe Refuge and Shelter Bay, Books 1 & 2 in her Newport of the West series, are set in her hometown of Lake Geneva, Wisconsin. She lives in northeastern Illinois with her two rescue cats.