Standing in the Rainbow - Fannie Flagg [17]
Back at home, although life may not have been as glamorous or nearly as dangerous as it was for Ada, the whole town was focused on winning the war. Neighbor Dorothy had adjusted all her radio recipes, leaving out or reducing the amount of the items that were rationed, sugar and fat, butter and meat. Victory gardens were planted in every yard and Doc Smith was the town’s air-raid warden. They staged several blackouts and did well, although few really worried that the Japanese or the Germans would go out of their way to attack Elmwood Springs. But even without the threat of being bombed, the war years, as they did everywhere, brought heartbreak and change. In 1942 the entire senior football team at the Elmwood Springs high school had enlisted the day after graduation and some did not come back. The Nordstroms, who owned the bakery, lost their boy Gene in Iwo Jima in ’44 and several farm boys living on the outskirts of town did not come back as well. Some of the older girls and women who had left town and gone to the larger cities to take factory jobs returned with different attitudes and ambitions than they’d had before they’d left. Ada Goodnight told her sister that if she could fly a plane there was no limit to what women could do—and proved it. She brought her new husband home and proudly introduced him all over town as her “war bride” and soon owned and ran her own flying school. Soldiers who returned seemed more serious than they had when they’d left. But even people who stayed home during the war had grown up a little faster than they should have, including Anna Lee.
At an age when she should have been concerned with nothing more than going to dances, wearing pretty clothes, and having fun, she received a letter.
October 24, 1945
Yorkshire, England
Dear Miss Smith,
I regret to report that your friend Pfc. Harry Crawford, United States Army, passed away in hospital this morning resulting from wounds received.
Although I did not know him long I can tell you he was a lovely boy and displayed bravery and courage right up to the very end.
If it is any consolation do know your letters and your photo cheered him greatly during his last days. As I was the one who read them to him, I felt I might take the liberty to write and return your letters and photo, along with my deepest sympathies for your loss.
Respectfully,
Glyniss Neale, R.N.
Veterans Hospital
That afternoon her mother tried to console her but there was little she could do except sit and listen as Anna Lee sobbed. “Oh, Mother, I’m so ashamed, I didn’t even answer his last letter. I thought now that the war was over it didn’t matter if I didn’t write so much. . . . Now it’s too late. . . . I feel so bad. I wish I could die.”
It was shortly after that day that Anna Lee solemnly announced to her family that she had made a decision never to marry and to dedicate her entire life to the nursing profession. Her mother said, “Well, that’s wonderful, honey, but let’s wait until you finish high school and then see how you feel.”
Dorothy certainly would not mind. As their next-door neighbor Nurse Ruby Robinson always said, “Nursing is a good steady profession.” But Dorothy was not convinced Anna Lee would stick to her decision. Last year Anna Lee had announced to the family that she planned to become a professional ice skater and travel around the world. An odd ambition for a girl who had never been near an ice-skating rink in her life, but as Mother Smith quietly pointed out, Anna Lee might have seen one too many Sonja Henie movies.
The Songbird
AFTER THE WAR the town’s population had remained much the same, except