Kansas Senior Press Service News ArticlesKansas Senior Press Service News ArticlesBy Kansas Senior Press Service
According to the Alzheimer’s Association, everyone experiences memory lapses from time to time — but an increase in the following symptoms may indicate that your older loved one should see his or her health care provider:
For additional information, visit www.alz.org or call 800-272-3900. The Alzheimer’s Association is a voluntary organization dedicated to researching the prevention, cures, and treatments of Alzheimer’s Disease.
Source: The Alzheimer’s Association
By Kansas Senior Press Service
Overexposure to the sun can result in skin cancer later in life. Consider these facts and statistics, and share them with your friends and with family members overseeing the health of your grandchildren or great-grandchildren.
Dangers of ultra-violet (UV) exposure
Facts about skin cancer
For more information, consult health care professionals or your local public health department.
Source: www.sunsafetyalliance.org
By Lynn Anderson
Kansas Senior Press Service
To be perfectly accurate, Hazel Thomas was not a “Rosie the Riveter.” She was a “Winnie the Welder” — a class A welder, who loved the work and was proud of it.
Hazel Wright was born in 1924 in Graham, Mo., one of five siblings. The family lived in Colorado for a time, but when Hazel was just 10, her mother died. Overwhelmed by the demands of earning a living while being a parent, her father scattered the children around the country with relatives. Hazel was entrusted to a “loving little aunt” in St. Joseph, who took her in for one year. Then she lived for brief periods with various relatives, including an aunt and uncle in Providence, R.I., where she moved after her sophomore year of high school. Hazel graduated there in June of 1942 and immediately returned to St. Joseph — where she became a National Youth Administration welder trainee.
“I was so tickled to fall into this,” Hazel recalls of the government-sponsored program. Her small welding class, of about seven students, was all female. That’s how things were, with all the men who could be spared from non-essential jobs off at war. She was just a girl— a dark-haired beauty — and throwing herself into the war effort was exactly what she wanted.
When she finished her three-month course of study, she went job hunting. To be placed in a war factory, the girls had to meet two requirements: receive a smallpox vaccine and have $20 in cash. She got the shot but didn’t have the money.
“Since Dad was in the Army, the Red Cross provided my $20,” she said. She quickly was hired at Rearwin Aircraft of Kansas City, Kan., building CG-4 cargo gliders — lightweight, disposable planes with metal tube frames covered by a fabric skin. The gliders, loaded with war parts and equipment, were flown into isolated places where regular air traffic couldn’t land and, after completing their mission, were abandoned.
Rearwin is where the tubing was welded together.
“At each plane’s nose was a big plate; my job was to climb into the nose and weld the plate on,” Hazel remembers.
She lived in a boarding house at Seventh and Quindaro with many of the factory’s other women workers. Each day they would be bused to the plant in the Fairfax district of Kansas City, Kan.
Hazel says that the men and women in the plants were paid the same during the war, based on their classification. The top wage was $1.35 per hour for class A welders.
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Soon after starting at Rearwin, Hazel began dating a handsome young co-worker named Laddie Bowman and within half a year, they married. Because Laddie was her supervisor, they couldn’t both continue to work there — so they embarked on an adventure.
“We tripped on down to St. Louis and went to work in the old Anheuser Busch wagon shop, making the same kind of glider,” Hazel recalls. But because Laddie had been temporarily unemployed, the Army snapped him up and sent him to Sheppard Field in Texas, so she returned to her home territory.
This time, Hazel put her gas-welding talents to use at North American Aviation, where the B-25 bomber was being assembled. The plant ran three shifts and Hazel worked all of them at one time or another. She remembers that the factory walls were adorned with posters urging the workers on and encouraging tight security. (“Loose lips sink ships” was a popular motto.) She and the other workers had special badges for plant access and they were kept in a fragmented work environment, never told which parts of the plane they were working on.
To earn and maintain class A welder status, Hazel had to obtain certification training, pass an exam, be recertified every six months, and take a difficult course in the properties of weldable metals. Throughout the war, Hazel was a proud member of United Auto Workers Local 31.
Doing “men’s work” wasn’t the only change on the home front. As Hazel puts it, “Everybody sacrificed.” She remembers saving all kinds of metals, planting gardens, and yearning for the coffee, sugar, shoes, tires, pork and beef, and nylon stockings that were so tightly rationed.
When the war ended, in August 1945, Hazel rejoiced. But she and all the other woman workers got telegrams informing them that they were not to return to the plant. She wasn’t surprised.
“My general foreman had a very stand-back attitude toward us girls,” Hazel said. “One day I heard him remark, ‘When the boys come back, you gals are going to have to stay home.’”
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Banished from airplane manufacturing, Hazel was determined to use her welding skills. One day she saw a newspaper ad for manufacturing heavy-gauge cooking utensils at Vita Craft in Kansas City, Mo. There she used silver solder to weld aluminum pans — touchy, highly skilled work.
“To do aluminum, you had to be good!” Hazel says with pride.
By this time, many widows and single mothers were performing paid labor, Hazel recalls of the years right after the war.
“In my opinion, this is where things turned around in terms of women in the workforce,” she said.
Hazel married again, this time to Orville Thomas, a man in the construction trades, and followed him all over the country, living in trailer houses and raising their three children. Orville died in 1981. Their children are Amy Sue Lees, of Overland Park; Charles Thomas, of Leavenworth; and Danny Thomas, of Lawrence. She has six grandchildren and numerous great-grandchildren.
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Hazel’s memories of her Winnie the Welder years are vivid as can be, helped along by 18 years of welder reunions that occurred from 1988 to 2005. She’s also had many chances to verbalize those memories. In recent months, she has spoken on three occasions to elementary school students and teachers about her work during the war. She was also featured in a video about the home front (see sidebar).
Thank you, Hazel, and all other unsung heroines.
Lynn Anderson is the editor of The Best Times, a monthly newspaper provided for all Johnson County residents aged 60 and over.
<Sidebar>
Over here: Kansas City and World War II
When the United States entered World War II after Pearl Harbor, the entire country gathered its resources to create a unified effort against the Axis powers. Men and machines were sent to the fronts all over the world.
The home front ,which provides the weapons, supplies, transportation and political and moral support, rarely gets equal credit with the fighting fronts. But World War II required such a massive buildup in such a short time that in some ways the home-front effort was as impressive as the fighting in Europe or the Pacific. The Kansas City home front was no exception.
A “sleeping industrial giant,” Kansas City played a central but little-known role. It was already a major transportation hub, with men and materials flowing both east and west. This naturally allowed other opportunities to flourish.
Through shrewd lobbying, city administrators secured government defense contracts from companies including Pratt & Whitney, which built airplane engines, and North American Aviation, to build B-25 bombers at Fairfax. Local companies eagerly shifted gears and began producing war materials ranging from airplanes and gliders to landing craft, boats, steel tanks, gun stocks, bullets, radio equipment, wire rope, tents, steel and batteries. Ultimately, 1 percent of every American dollar went to firms in Jackson, Clay and Wyandotte counties.
For the duration. Kansas City civilians, although with no immediate threat to the area, mobilized to do their part. Programs such as Red Cross blood drives, war rallies, war bonds, rationing, victory gardens and civilian defense programs proved that Kansas City wholeheartedly supported the war effort. And a hefty share of women and minorities went to work in the factories in place of our fighting GIs. Kansas City learned to do without, make do, and save pennies for war bonds.
A little-known story. Once America was fully entrenched in every theater of battle, the heartland was the recipient of prisoners of war, with camps in Liberty, Mo., Lawrence, Kan., and other areas. Despite some opposition, they provided much-needed farm labor as the war trudged on.
Our most valuable assets. Our region sent “over there” our most valuable assets — the men and women who willingly went into the service and dedicated themselves to the American cause of liberty and justice for all peoples. But first they were trained, at places like Fort Leavenworth, the Olathe Naval Air Station, and Camp Crowder in Neosho, Mo. Flying fields rapidly became training grounds for fledgling pilots. Universities added special programs for the military.
The scrapbooks and memories of the people who lived the war are shared in a video titled “Over Here: The Story of Kansas City and World War II,” a lively look at Kansas City’s role on the home front. It was produced by KCPT Public Television 19 and is periodically re-broadcast. For information, call 816-756-3580.
Hazel Thomas (front row, second from right) with her work team at Rearwin Airplanes. An aviation museum at Whiteman Air Force Base in Warrensburg, Mo., shows the history of the gliders.
Hazel Thomas, welding at North American Aviation.
Buttons proving Hazel Thomas’ class A welder status and membership in UAW Local 31. “If you were welding,” Hazel recalls, “you’d better have a button on.”
These articles are also available electronically at the Center on Aging Website: http://www2.kumc.edu/coa/Senior_Press_Article/Topic_Index.htm