History Commons^™

Elrod, Cecil Murray, 1923-2002 (Mss 352), Manuscripts & Folklife Archives

MSS Finding Aids

Finding aid only for Manuscript Collection 352. Material related to Cecil Murray Elrod, chiefly about his service in the U.S. Navy during World War II in the Patrol Bombing Squadron VPB-21. Includes notes on planes and guns discussed during training, aviators flight log books, and other military papers. Also includes information about reunions of the Valley High School (Jefferson County, Kentucky) Class of 1943.

Rich, Louis Arnold, 1921-1944 (Sc 2402), Manuscripts & Folklife Archives

MSS Finding Aids

Finding aid only for Manuscripts Small Collection 2402. Letters of Louis Arnold Rich, a U. S. Army private from Tompkinsville, Kentucky, written to his wife and in-laws during his military training and while hospitalized for a long illness that resulted in his death on 3 August 1944. He writes of his medical condition and mentions other soldiers from home. Includes letters from his wife, Martha, to her parents and grandmother discussing his medical treatment. Also includes an unidentified soldier’s letter and a child’s letter to her father.

Robertson, J. Lee, B. 1922 (Fa 535), Manuscripts & Folklife Archives

FA Finding Aids

Finding aid only for Folklife Archives Project 535. Interview with J. Lee Robertson conducted by Kenneth Hines and Gil Calhoun in Bowling Green, Kentucky. Robertson reminisces about the U.S. Army during World war II and his long association with Western Kentucky University.

Green Collection (Mss 49), Manuscripts & Folklife Archives

MSS Finding Aids

Finding aid only for Manuscripts Collection 49. Correspondence of the Green family, Falls of Rough, Grayson County, Kentucky, including business papers and account books, and correspondence for several generations of the Robert Wilmot Scott family, originally of Frankfort, Kentucky.

Meador, Richards, Johnson Family Papers (Mss 345), Manuscripts & Folklife Archives

MSS Finding Aids

Finding aid and typescripts (click on "Additional Files" below) for Manuscripts Collection 345. Correspondence, legal documents, and sundry material related to the Meador, Richards, and Johnson families chiefly of Simpson County and Logan County, Kentucky. Also includes documents and correspondence from the King and Garrett families of Robertson and Sumner County, Tennessee. The attached 1842 letters are from R. M. Latimer to Caroline Garrett reporting the death and burial of her brother, George King, in Cuba; and to Caroline Garrett from another brother, John, discussing tensions with Mexico.

Travelstead, Chester Coleman, 1911-2006 (Mss 281), Manuscripts & Folklife Archives

MSS Finding Aids

Finding aid only for Manuscripts Collection 281. Chiefly personal and professional correspondence, speeches, journal articles, reminiscences, and news clippings of noted educator Chester Coleman Travelstead. Of particular interest are the materials related to his 1955 dismissal from the University of South Carolina owing to his support of racial integration. Also includes correspondence and diaries of his mother Nelle (Gooch) Travelstead, long-time Western Kentucky University faculty member.

Pace, Stanley Carter, B. 1921 (Fa 532), Manuscripts & Folklife Archives

FA Finding Aids

Finding aid only for Folklife Archives Project 532. Presentation made by Stanley Carter Pace, a Kentucky native, to an unidentified group at the Eldorado Country Club, Indian Wells, California, on 25 March 1998 about his experiences in World War II. Pace served in the U.S. Army Air Corps. In August 1944 he was shot down in Austria and placed in a hospital and then transferred to a German prisoner of war camp. He was liberated in April 1945. Videotaped by Dreamweaver Video of Palm Desert, California, 1998.

Ms-117: Papers Of George H. Sweet Jr. ’42, Elizabeth M. Ungemach

All Finding Aids

This collection gives insight into the pre- and inter-wartime life of George H. Sweet Jr. ’42 as a member and captain of L.S.T. 358 in the Mediterranean. It also provides general information about World War II in the Mediterranean and L.S.T.s. It further gives a glimpse of the experiences of Donald Sweet ’49 as an aircrewman in the Pacific theater, specifically about life and important happenings during the invasion of Okinawa in 1945.

Special Collections and College Archives Finding Aids are discovery tools used to describe and provide access to our holdings. Finding aids include historical and biographical information about …

Tolle, Donald James, 1918-1993 (Sc 2344), Manuscripts & Folklife Archives

MSS Finding Aids

Typescripted World War II diary of Donald James Tolle, kept 1942-1945 while serving in England, Italy and North Africa with the Army Air Corps, 47th Bombardment Group (Light). Includes diary annotations made in 1988, materials from a 1979 reunion of the Bombardment Group, biographical data on Tolle, his obituary, and a colleague's remarks at his memorial service.

World War Ii, 1939-1945 - Letters (Mss 330), Manuscripts & Folklife Archives

MSS Finding Aids

Finding aid only for Manuscripts Collection 330. Letters written to parents, friends, faculty and staff of Western Kentucky University by students during their service in Word War II. Includes some press releases, newspaper articles and photos. Also includes a history and travel log of the USS Stevens.

Warren County, Kentucky - World War Ii Servicemen (Mss 326), Manuscripts & Folklife Archives

MSS Finding Aids

Finding aid only for Manuscripts Collection 326. Data and newspaper clippings on U.S. military personnel from Warren County, collected during their service in World War II. The seventy pages of names includes women and African Americans.

Swann Family - Ration Books, 1943 (Sc 2320), Manuscripts & Folklife Archives

MSS Finding Aids

Finding aid only for Manuscripts Small Collection 2230. World War II ration books (4; covers only) belonging to various members of the Swann family of Niagara Falls, Niagara County, New York. Also includes some brief biographical notes about the family.

Robertson, Gabrielle, 1889-1970 (Mss 323), Manuscripts & Folklife Archives

MSS Finding Aids

Finding aid only for Manuscripts Collection 323. Chiefly letters to Gabrielle Robertson, History Department faculty member, Western Kentucky University, 1916 to 1960. Of particular interest are those letters from former students serving in the military during World War II. Also includes genealogical materials and family photographs.

Pearson, Murl Douglas, 1920-1970 (Sc 2285), Manuscripts & Folklife Archives

MSS Finding Aids

Finding aid only for Manuscripts Small Collection 2285. Letters sent from Murl D. Pearson to his parents, Dewey and Cora Pearson, Bowling Green, Kentucky, in which he relates information about his service in the U.S. Army in World War II. Pearson was working at a desk job in England during the course of these letters.

Sutton, Thomas W. (Sc 2319), Manuscripts & Folklife Archives

MSS Finding Aids

Finding aid, scan and typescript (Click on "Additional Files" below) for Manuscripts Small Collection 2319. "A Letter on a Record" from World War II in which Thomas W. Sutton, Camp Crowder, Missouri, records an oral letter on a phonograph record to Eva Mae Stone, Washington, D.C. The record has a U.S.O. logo and the paper enclosure has a military theme. A typescript of the letter is included.

Through The Eyes Of A Child: The Archaeology Of Wwii Japanese American Internment At Amache, April Kamp-Whittaker

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

Children’s lives in the World War II Japanese American Internment Camp, Amache are investigated using a combination of archaeology, oral history, and archival research. As part of internees’ efforts to create a more hospitable environment both children and adults extensively modified the physical landscape. The importance of landscape and place in Japanese culture and for the internee community is examined using the development of gardens around the elementary school as a case study. Internees also developed a rich social landscape that allowed for the socialization of children within Amache. The socialization of children at Amache was being influenced by the …

Newman, Robert Mason, 1910-1988 & Frances Earlene (Holton) Newman, B. 1918 (Sc 2278), Manuscripts & Folklife Archives

MSS Finding Aids

Finding aid only for Manuscripts Small Collection 2278. Miscellaneous papers, chiefly items related to Robert Mason Newman's retirement from the U.S. Naval Reserves and pre-marriage letters written to Frances Earlene Holton from her friends.

Brashear, Kathleen, 1895-1986 (Sc 2260), Manuscripts & Folklife Archives

MSS Finding Aids

Finding aid only for Manuscripts Small Collection 2260. Card, with picture of his home, sent by T.C. Cherry to teacher Kathleen Brashear, prior to the outbreak of World War II. Also, related correspondence and biographical material about Brashear.

For God And Country: Baptist General Conference Attitudes Toward World War Ii, Taylor Ferda

History Student Works

On the afternoon of February 23, 1943, amidst the gathering of professors, pastors, and students, the inauguration ceremony of Professor Henry Conrad Wingblade as the second president of Bethel Institute was held at the school's chapel. In his acceptance address entitled, "Bethel and the World of Tomorrow," Wingblade reflected on the Institute's role in a global war that seemed to be spiraling out of control: "Nor should we forget just now that Bethel men and women are sharing in the crucial tasks and burdens which face our country and the world today-increasingly in the places of spiritual power as chaplains, …

Jud Ms 02 Portland Jewish Community Center Uso Guest Book Finding Aid, Karin A. France

Search the Manuscript Collection (Finding Aids)

Description:

The Jewish Community Center on Cumberland Avenue in Portland, Maine was the site of United Service Organization (USO) social events, held regularly from at least October 1943 to September 1946. Most of the servicemen (and some women who were nurses) who attended events at the Community Center were in the Navy, stationed on shops docked or anchored in Casco Bay. These social events were sometimes held out on the islands. Although hosted by the Jewish Community Center, anyone was welcome, regardless of religion. Eleanor Edison Taft saved this ledger listing the names of attendees at the USO events when …

Collateral Damage: Veterans And Domestic Violence In Mari Sandoz's The Tom-Walker, Kathy Bahr

Great Plains Quarterly

The Tom-Walker (1947) associates domestic violence on a national scale with the domestic violence of veterans returning home after the Civil War and two world wars. This novel anticipates both the rise of McCarthyism and the long shadow cast by the atom bomb over the years constituting the Cold War. ... The Tom-Walker is remarkable in its depiction of the ugly, almost unmentionable effects of war on the domestic lives of individual veterans. Sandoz, like a number of her contemporaries, was particularly concerned about the horrors of war, but unlike many writers, she focuses on the home front and on …

Toomey, Lawrence Otto, 1903-1992 (Sc 2212), Manuscripts & Folklife Archives

MSS Finding Aids

Finding aid only for Manuscripts Small Collection 2212. Lawrence Otto Toomey's memoir titled "Duty in the Medical Corps Reserves, May 11, 1942-January 30, 1966," dealing chiefly with his service in the Pacific during World War II. Also includes a copy of his obituary.

Over Here, Over There (Fa 480), Manuscripts & Folklife Archives

FA Finding Aids

Finding aid only for Folklife Archives Project 480. Collection contains recorded interviews and transcriptions conducted by David Baxter and Laura Harper Lee. The interviews contain information about the war effort at home and, for those who served, their experiences with the military and their combat experiences specifically.

Wku Veterans History Project (Mss 278), Manuscripts & Folklife Archives

MSS Finding Aids

Finding aid only for Manuscripts Collection 278. Biographical data sheets and video interviews with U.S. war veterans in western Kentucky as part of the Veterans History Project, created by Congress in 2000. Dr. Gary L. Villereal, regional project coordinator.

Lampkin, Clifton Wallace, 1884-1959 (Sc 2173), Manuscripts & Folklife Archives

MSS Finding Aids

Finding aid only for Manuscripts Small Collection 2173. Materials related to Clifton Wallace Lampkin, the mayor of Bowling Green, Kentucky from 1953-1959. Includes correspondence, award certificates and appreciations of his philanthropy, a photograph, and a resolution passed on his death by American National Bank and Trust Company. Also includes letters from two post-World War II refugees thanking him for aid packages.

The Experience Of The 756th Tank Battalion In World War Two: A Microcosm, Scott Millenbach

Senior Theses

December 7, 1941, "a day which will live in infamy," was the moment that the United States was plunged into the largest conflict that the world had ever seen. The sovereignty of the United States was being threatened at two ends of the globe by tyrannical leaders on the continent of Europe and the islands of the Pacific. In the years to come, the U.S. would have to fight to stop the spread of Emperor Hirohito's army in the Pacific and Hitler's Nazi Wermacht in Europe. It would take all the resources our mighty country could muster and the fighting …

Avery, James Russell, B. 1921 (Sc 2128), Manuscripts & Folklife Archives

MSS Finding Aids

Finding aid only for Manuscripts Small Collection 2128. "My Story," the autobiography of James Russell Avery, a Hardin County native, prepared as a project of WKU gerontology student Shaylin Gimborys. Includes illustrations and genealogical information on the Avery family.

Brown, George A., Jr. - Letter To (Sc 2148), Manuscripts & Folklife Archives

MSS Finding Aids

Finding aid only for Manuscripts Small Collection 2148. Letters (2) written to George A Brown, Jr., Nashville, Tennessee, from two friends serving overseas during World War II; one was in Germany and the other was in the Pacific.

A History Of El Paso's Company E In World War Ii, Jorge Rodriguez

Open Access Theses & Dissertations

For the most part, Hispanics in the U.S. military were not segregated into separate units, but there was, at least, one known exception. It is this particular story of a National Guard unit from El Paso, Texas designated as Company E that has received minimal attention by historians. This unit was unlike any other unit of the National Guard in that it consisted only of Mexican-Americans.

The Border At War: World War Ii Along The United States-Mexico Border, Winifred Baumer Dowling

Open Access Theses & Dissertations

The U.S.-Mexico border, especially the shared border of El Paso, Texas and Ciudad Juarez, Chihuahua, was in many ways transformed by the effects of World War II. This study examines change or continuity brought about by the war. The border region reflected many similarities to the national reaction to the upheaval of World War II. Yet there were dramatic differences as well. Examples of continuity and change are examined through the lens of border relations, labor and the economy, Mexican Americans, border women, and health on the border.

Wartime relations between El Paso and Juarez reached a zenith of good …