World War II – Pachofa-Unfinished

Glenn Miller’s recording of Moonlight Serenade was made in the summer of 1939. World War II broke out that summer. For the young of dancing age no sound recollects that time more than the sound of the Glenn Miller orchestra. It was a time for having fun and perhaps falling in love before those boys were swept away into the war.

Maybe it was because there was a sweetness to his sound which made it especially irresistible to teens and 20’s who still wanted to swing but who were painfully aware of the sadness of departures. Maybe Tommy Dorsey, Artie Shaw, or Benny Goodman made more sophisticated music, but Glenn Miller topped the charts. Record stores had listening rooms where you could sample the sound and the beat in quiet while you decided which you were going to buy.

He had America’s music pulse–he knew what would please the listeners. He exuded little warmth on the bandstand, but once the band struck up, audiences were done for. Throats clutched, eyes softened. Can any other record match Moonlight Serenade for its ability to induce a Pavlovian slaver for so long? His recording of the telephone number of the Pennsylvania Hotel in New York; Pennsylvania 65-OH-OH-OH was on everybody’s lips, and American Patrol created the proper patriotic lift.

Miller enlisted and formed a band playing for the troops in Britain and France. He boarded a plane in December, 1944 to fly across the English Channel. The plane never arrived. It was the night the music died.

Alaska Bears KSR

It has been said that nothing is so bad it can’t get worse, and I’m sure that is so. The Great Depression was certainly one of those bad times for a great many people. Having weathered through that one, I can vouch for a degree of discomfort and a few stories my kids think are highly unlikely, but even so, we had it good compared to a lot of people. The pundits seem to feel that the entire world will be having another Depression soon enough. It has become serious enough to put a capital “D” on it already. Since the first one was “The Great” I wonder what the next designation will be.

I remember two friends we met years ago in Washington state. They were small town kids when they married in 1939 during the Great Depression, and in her words, they were “Depressionate”! They were both teachers, but had to keep the marriage a secret in order to keep their jobs. When World War II was declared, they quit teaching and both went to work at the The Boeing Company in Seattle. She worked as an IBM operator on a “monstrous, enormous machine!” ( Times have changed, now we carry computers in our pockets!)

When the war ended in 1946, thousands of people lost their war jobs, along with Nonie and Jack. They started out thinking they would like to work in fish and wildlife management for the government, but instead were both offered jobs teaching Aleut natives in Alaska. Within 10 days they were on a boat bound for tiny Saint Paul Island, in the Pribilof Island group of Alaska, in the middle of the Bering Sea. The nearest land mass was 150 miles away. Jack taught all the students from fifth grade up, and Nonie taught the third and fourth grade students. Their one and only co-worker taught first and second grades.

Japanese fleets had been located within 15 miles of the island during the war, and Japanese fishing floats came ashore regularly. There was still a feeling of unrest about the people. They were iced in in the winter, and had no way out and no communication except for telegram and short-wave radio or the emergency weather plane. In good weather the wind swept across the island, bringing Russia’s icy chill. The men hunted seals, and in the short summers Jack worked in an office counting seal pelts for the government.

The U.S. Coast Guard also had a station on the island, but only five boats arrived each year, not counting a supply vessel which brought in coal and large items once a year in the summer. A lonely existence.

In 1948 , after having been there for two years, they returned to Seattle and resumed their teaching careers in a small town in western Washington. Another couple of survivors of the Great Depression.

“Hope is the thing with feathers that perches in the soul.” Emily Dickinson