During World War II, my various aunties, my mother and her cousins, and my grandmother diligently supported the national home front activities to boost the war effort, mostly in the Portland, Ore.-Vancouver, Wash. area, but also from other cities. First, a bit about the family: Raymond Ernest Lionberger, my handsome and enterprising grandfather, died when…

AIRCRAFT/ROCKET WORKER – Edith Lenore (Lionberger) Alkire, 42, grandaunt: By 1943, beautiful, intelligent Edith was performing war work. Her job was to lead a small but vital group of women machinists, filling rocket propellant orders at California Institute of Technology (CIT), in later years known as CalTech. She married in September of 1944 and continued…

WAVE – Roberta Elaine Witcraft, 21, mother: My beautiful and intelligent mother, Elaine, made the local paper in April of 1945. It was an event worth reporting: “WAVE Called – Roberta Elaine Witcraft of . . . Eugene [Oregon], who enlisted recently in the WAVES, has been called to active duty, and is ordered to…

NURSE CORPS. – Floris Adele Neil, 20, 1st cousin once removed: Lovely and loving, Adele, technically a cousin whom I knew as Aunt Adele, joined the United States Cadet Nurse Corps (CNC) training in 1943 at Providence Hospital in Portland, to serve under the U.S. Public Health Service. The Cadet Nurse Corps began in 1943…