November 5 and 16, 1944, Anna writes two letters to her brothers reporting on the latest from home. The downstairs flat on Orange Street is coming together with Anna and Eddie putting the final touches on their home. As Anna puts it, “The house really looks pretty with a new suit of clothes on it.” She goes on to detail some of the work, “This coming week we will lay all the linoleums and clean our bedroom, put up shades and curtains and then the week after that the furniture can come and two weeks from today we expect to be in our own flat.” The refrigerator was delivered and a new toilet and tub were installed in the bathroom.
It looks like Eddie’s employer is moving too. Between the move at work and home, he is burning the candle at both ends. “They are moving Trojan Pontiac so they shut down the place for business and are doing that. Yesterday when he came home from work he was so tired that he just sat on a chair… Between the house and the shop he is certainly doing his share of work. And when it ends it will be both at once and then Eddie says he ought to take off and take it easy for a few months to make up for lost time.”
Apparently Stanley sent a picture home of himself that was taken in front of one of the Quonset huts at Deenethorpe. The reaction from back home was that “mama…started to cry and…said that poor sonny has to live in such ash barrels…” Anna explains that when her and her father heard the reaction that “it struck me so funny that daddy and I just laughed and mama cried. What a combination. We explained that they aren’t as tough as she thinks but come to think of it they do look like barrels so round in shape with all those lines going around it.”
Photo of the Quonset huts in the Deenethorpe Diorama at the Mighty 8th Air Force Museum. When mama saw a picture of Stanley in front of the Quonset huts in Deenethorpe she cried in despair that her son “has to live in such ash barrels.”
It is well over a week before Anna’s next letter appears. She explains, “I am sick and have been since last Friday. That is why you haven’t had even one letter from us. …Most of my time I spent sleeping and laying down because I couldn’t eat until yesterday…” Various family members have told Anna that they hope she starts to feel better soon in a way that only family can. “Eddie’s folks told me to get well so that I could start enjoying my new home instead of leaving it for some other woman. Mama said I should get well so Terry can have a mother instead of a step mother.
As Dad did in his last letter, Anna recaps the recent presidential election. “Last Tuesday we all voted for Roosevelt except Eddie. For a while I heard the Republicans on the radio I thought they were okay but toward the end they got desperate and were smearing President Roosevelt too much and everybody in their right mind would know that those things couldn’t be true. Eddie felt funny because he thought we voted for Dewey but I guess that is your privilege to vote how you want in this country.”
In other news about the family:
- “…Frankie Morawski from Oak Street is home form the Jap Coast. I saw him and Catherine yesterday…”
- Their cousin Vincent has a new address. It is identified as Co. A, 17th Inf. Bn., A.P.O.No. 262, New York.
- Johnny Pritchard “…got married in Hawaii to some native girl over there this past August.”
Before closing the letter, Anna writes, “This coming week is Thanksgiving. …I needn’t tell you boys that we will miss you also and wish you could be here. Every time one of those bigger feasts come around that when we miss you worse because during the week work makes you forget more.”