Category Archives: World War II Letters

Silvester Schiele

Letter transcription:

August 16, 1945

Aug. 16 45

Dear Folks – Vine wrote me some days ago that Roscoe was leaving for the west coast Aug. 17^th. We hope now as Japan has surrendered you will be able to return to private life. It would be a shame if you had to return again to the overseas territory.

We leave for home, Chicago, the 23^rd, next Thursday, so don’t write us here, but our home address. It’s beautiful here this time of the year – but we have been away from Chicago 2 months, so we go about one week earlier than usual.

Is John through at Evanston for this year? If he is still there next Friday it would be fine if he would stay with us over Sunday. We would love to have him. Jessie & I are both fine, I am much better, thank the Lord. Jessie’s sister is not so well, arthritis in her back – very painful, we hope to go to Clay City early in September – Hope you will be at Kentland. Our mail is terrible slow here this year. Drop us, even just a line or postal card.

Our love and best wishes

Sincerely,
Silvester

Home address 2028 W. 110^th St. – Chicago

[Editor’s note: Silvester Schiele was Roscoe’s uncle. Vine, a nickname for Lovina, was Roscoe’s mother.]

©2016 copyright owned and transcribed by Deborah Sweeney
Post originally found: https://genealogylady.net/2016/04/05/silvester-schiele-2/

Meet at Grandma’s

4 Replies

Letter transcription:

August 2, 1945

Evanston Aug. 2

Dear Mother,

Just a line or two to tell you I think I’ll meet you at Grandma’s. Since you’re not coming till Tuesday that will give me plenty of time to plan things out. I’ll go to Wilmington Saturday. The Mutchlers know the transportation situation and can help me plan how to get to C.C.

Mrs. S. is going to help me send my stuff by express.

So I’ll be seeing you Tuesday –

Love John

©2016 copyright owned and transcribed by Deborah Sweeney
Post originally found: https://genealogylady.net/2016/04/03/meet-at-grandmas/

Guest of Honor

1 Reply

Letter transcription:

Lt. R. S. Yegerlehner
324 W. Kansas
Liberty, Missouri

Dear Lt. Yegerlehner,

You and your family are invited to be the guest of the Navy faculty, officers, and ship company at a picnic held at Lake Mauer, Saturday afternoon, 4 August. Supper will be served at 1830 but many are going in time to have a swim before that time.

Sincerely yours
Charles E. McClard

R.S.V.P.

_________________________________________________
NEW MEDICAL OFFICER
AT NAVY SCHOOL
Lt. Roscoe S. Yegerlehner Re-
ceives Assignment To Fleet
Lt. Comdr. Wright Here.

Lieut. Roscoe S. Yegerlehner, medical officer at the V-5 Naval Academic Refresher Unit at William Jewell college the past 14 months, expects soon to be reassigned to the Pacific fleet and will leave next Wednesday for San Francisco, it was reported today by Lt. John B. Moore, commanding officer of the school.
He will be replaced by Lt. Comdr. Claude B. Wright, who is scheduled to arrive in Liberty sometime this week from Jacksonville, Fla., where he has been in a naval hospital.
Dr. Yegerlehner came to Liberty after twenty months with land-based hospitals in the South Pacific. During his service there he had charge of sanitation and helped establish new naval hospitals in New Caledonia and in the Solomon Islands and elsewhere in the Pacific area. He was also at the Great Lakes naval training center for a time.
During his assigment here he has also had the supervision of the ‘sick bay’ at the Parkville college navy unit.
Mrs. Yegerlehner and two sons, Mark 12, and David 3, expect to go to the family home at Kentland, Ind. A third son, John, is a music student at Northwestern university. The Yegerlehners lived at 324 West Kansas street while in Liberty and during their residence made many friends.

© 2016 copyright owned and transcribed by Deborah Sweeney
Post originally found: https://genealogylady.net/2016/04/02/guest-of-honor/

Automobile Insurance

2 Replies

Letter Transcription:

Dr. Roscoe L. Yegerlehner
324 W. Kansas St.
Liberty, Missouri

Dear Doctor:

The insurance on your 1942 Ford Sedan comes up for renewal on August 11^th, 1945. We have issued a renewal policy, being No. CA 40173 of the St. Paul Fire and St. Paul Mercury Insurance Company covering public liability, property damage, comprehensive and collision insurance. The renewal preium is $34.16 and we inclose statement for that amount. We also inclose the renewal policy. We trust this meets with your approval.

Yours truly,
PRAIRIE REALTY COMPANY
By
Alvin C. Cast

[Editor’s note: For a little history on the 1942 Ford Sedan, click here.]

©2016 copyright owned and transcribed by Deborah Sweeney
Post originally found: https://genealogylady.net/2016/04/01/automobile-insurance/

USS Sylvania

3 Replies

Letter transcription:

July 27, 1945, p. 1

27 July 1945

Dear Sis & Co.,

We just hit a port long enough to take on supplies and the mail, I had several letters and among them one from you which I now have before me to answer. I need not be in any hurry to answer as it will be three or four weeks before we hit another port but I like to keep my correspondence up to date as I do get lots of letters and I try to write a line or two to Thelma every day or so. Was sure glad to learn that you got John in Northwestern University, bet he is one of their youngest boys. I am going to drop him a line and also send him a birthday card but I seem to have either lost the card I had to send him or else I mailed it already, I believe I wrote and asked you about it so if I did not mail it I will explain it all to him when I write. My, my Sis you do have your troubles now and then, hope David is completely recovered from the pox by now.

Have two letters from Pauline, one from Lovelock and one from Penn. She has left Glenn and says he has made no attempt to get in touch with her or to learn how the boys are. I am going to try to help such as it is from away over the high seas. I just can’t understand why Glenn is acting up so. (James L. Foster CSF)

July 27, 1945, p. 2

[page 2] Things are going along fine on board the Sylvania. While I would much rather be back in civilian life as long as there is a war on I am going to make the best of whatever my lot is. I am enjoying this duty, have plenty of work, keeps me busy all day and sometimes part of the night. I am the plumber, my work is looking after the fresh and salt water lines and the drainage. Also have had quite a bit of piping to do, changing this line and that line and running new pipe lines, I enjoy it tho. Last week a fire main in Officer’s Country broke, flooding several rooms before we got it secured.

Thelma is now in Washington working, she returned to T.H. in June and soon was signed up for a job. I got five letters from her in the mail today, one written on the 19^th stated she was getting ready to leave for Washington the next day so by the time I hear from her again she will be all squared away. I hope Harvey has my car in N.Y. and will keep it until I return. Notice my new address. You should have no trouble guessing about where I am.

Love Jim

[Editor’s note: For more information about the history of the USS Sylvania, click here.]

According to the very last entry in the baby book, David broke out with the chicken pox on June 29th. From a letter which Gladys wrote to her brother Jim in 1983, she recalled the chicken pox adventure, “Well, we got to thinking about during the war, I had gone to Kentland with the children and David broke out with chicken-pox and I could not return on the train, so Jake drove 500 miles to get us, then headed back to Liberty, Mo., without any sleep. He drove 1,000 miles without any rest. We couldn’t even go into a restaurant, so Mark and I went to a grocery store and bought food and we ate in the car.”

USS Sylvania (Photograph in the Public domain, available via Wikipedia)

© 2016 copyright owned and transcribed by Deborah Sweeney
Post originally found: https://genealogylady.net/2016/03/31/uss-sylvania/

Monthly Update – March 2016

2 Replies

It is hard to believe that March is almost over. I have so much I am trying to accomplish right now. I am currently on spring break from school, and I am hoping to get a long list of things done by the end of the week. I’m keeping my fingers crossed that I get through the top few items on my list.

The WWII Project

The Letters

During last month I have published many letters that were not written by Roscoe and Gladys. These letters were written between June 1944 and August 1945. Over this fourteenth month period, Roscoe, Gladys and the boys were living together in Liberty, Missouri. Roscoe was attached to William Jewell College’s Naval Flight Preparatory School. His responsibilities included treating the officers and their families, as well as the soldiers attending the flight school. In August 1945, he was given orders to report to a new assignment on the west coast. To put this change of duty into historical perspective, Roscoe traveled to San Francisco days after the bombs were dropped on Japan and their inevitable surrender. Look for the letters between Roscoe and Gladys to resume the first week in April.

I have taken the next step in my preservation process. I have purchased some Hollinger boxes and heavy weight archival folders. Once I knock a few things off the top of my to-do list, I plan on moving the letters out of their plastic sheets and three ring binders. While working on the blog and books, it was definitely easier to store the letters in binders. However, this is not necessarily the best method for conserving them. I will start with the letters already published in Dear Mother, Love Daddy. I already have a basic finding aid prepared for cataloging the letters.

Dear Mother, Love Daddy

Unfortunately, I was not chosen as one of the local authors to participate in the Local Author Festival at the Sacramento library in April. I am definitely disappointed but not discouraged. If you have read the book, please leave a review on Goodreads or Amazon. The more reviews the book gets, the higher ranking it gets (and more likely it is to be highlighted by Amazon’s algorithms).

Lots of Love, Daddy

This month has been a huge push for me to get the manuscript prepared to turn over to my copy editor. I finally finished the index, and am currently working on the glossary of people. Then all that I have left is to write my author’s notes and acknowledgements, a list of illustrations and my biography. My father FINALLY found a envelope with many of the original photographs that I intend to use in this volume. Just in the nick of time! I need to sort through the envelope and re-scan some of these photographs as well as add some new unseen pictures to the book.

This month the preliminary cover for the book was designed! Many, many thanks to Dan Young for doing a stellar job. And so, dear readers, you get the first look!

Sacramento Library

Last weekend I enjoyed meeting with more patrons to assist them with their genealogy puzzles. Although a couple of my appointments were cancelled (we think because people did not realize it was Easter weekend), there were some walk-ins who filled up the empty spots in my schedule. I love exploring other people’s ancestry and seeing what we can find. If you are interested in booking an appointment, contact the Franklin branch.

My next lecture is scheduled for May 7th. I will be talking about some of my favorite free genealogy sites that are available on the Internet. One of those sites is Chronicling America on the Library of Congress’ website. This is a wonderful site for finding free digitized newspapers as well as an awesome finding aid for locating newspapers in repositories around the country.

Certification

I haven’t necessarily done much towards certification this month. However, I did discover that the Holmes County Library has digitized some of the local newspapers, including the Holmes County Farmer. Within minutes of discovering this resource, I located the obituary of an ancestor I am hoping to highlight in my KDP (Kinship-Determination Project). The KDP is usually one of the more extensive requirements of the certification portfolio. The requirement is to “submit a narrative genealogy, narrative lineage, or narrative pedigree that documents and explains linkages among three ancestral generations.”

I have also been thinking a lot about what sources I have and what sources I need to locate. One of my next tasks is to list and analyze the sources I have already accumulated so I can see where some of my gaps might be. Writing up a research plan for locating the missing documents is also on part of this step.

Alfred M. Dicks and Achilles Dicks affidavit

Alfred M. Dicks affidavit (Image courtesy of FamilySearch.org)

I have been thinking about what a “reasonably exhaustive search” may be for this project, and the other elements of the portfolio. This last month I have made some amazing discoveries in my own research. I have unearthed two documents related to my ancestor Alfred M. Dicks. The main reason I have found these documents now (after 20 years!) is that the collections have recently become available online. Neither document was in an indexed database. I had to search for hours in order to find them. I wonder what other documents I could find, if only, I could make it to the courthouse or local library myself. I have been unable to find a reliable researcher willing to take on this research for me, nor would my bank account be able to support the hourly fees. This rural county has a population of less than 20,000 people. My own small city has more than 7 times that amount. So when is a “reasonably exhaustive search” complete? I don’t have a good answer to this question. I worry that I won’t have done enough when it is time to submit my portfolio. The converse is, if you don’t stop at some point to write down what you have found, no one will know what you have discovered, and it may be lost again.

Jamboree

It is a little over two months before Jamboree. I was really hoping to see one of the sample BCG portfolios last year in the exhibition hall. There wasn’t even BCG booth! Because I am so much closer to wanting to start the certification process, I emailed the BCG this week. I received confirmation that the sample portfolios will be there. Have you checked out a BCG portfolio at a genealogy conference? I can’t wait to see one (to see whether my work is at that level or not).

Until next month! Happy hunting!

Last from Lentz

1 Reply

Letter transcription:

May 6, 1945
Sunday

Yegie – Such a quick response deserves a prompt reply. You are doing much better – are you striking for the ½ stripe?

Not much news – but it is my weekend on duty with no one but the maintenance crew – dammit and the C.O. is not very gracious about giving us the PM or evening on Sundays when there is no work. Hell and damnation – you know the old Regular J.I. Navy. Can you imagine a Chief and 2 Ph. Mates on dates & a Med. Officer.

Only news I have is that Bob O’Donnell is now in Recruiting Duty in Jacksonville, Fla. Tues. to Sat. they leave Jax for Fort or Camp Blanning 40 miles away at 0800, back at 1600. Sat. 1300. Nothing to do until Tuesday. (Three M.D.’s & 3 corpsmen). Howard Witter is exec. after being on similar duty at Jackson, Miss. They have 1 night of duty every 5 or 6 weeks – shove patras. What do you think of that for duty.

MacClatchie is still in Brazil – John is still in USNH Phila.

[page 2] Looks like there will be a break up or a lessening of activities everywhere since the collapse in Europe. Perhaps you will be going to China with me. Looks like V-12s, etc., will not be called anymore – will there? What do you think they will do with you? Have you applied for any P.G. work or do you “wanta go ho-o-o-me!)

Met Mr. Beard – remember the transportation officer at Base 4. He is on duty at the Navy yard.

Heard from New Zealand today – all is well. The “old lady” still carrying on at B/casting.

Listen, bub, if I am encouraging you to write too often or too much, let me know or just procrastinate but don’t fail to tell me when you get orders.

May go to Wash. D.C. any day – waiting for Truman to call me. – No kidding, I mean to go soon as arrangements here can be made. We can’t get a relief so it would mean one man has to stay on all the time (26 hrs. a day).

Regards to family – don’t work too hard (Kia Ora) –
Ed.

©2016 copyright owned and transcribed by Deborah Sweeney
Post originally found: https://genealogylady.net/2016/03/30/last-from-lentz/

Baby Rosenberg

1 Reply

April 23, 1945

Dear Mr. & Mrs. Yegerlehner,

Thanks a load for your kind wishes and the cute little booties – they really are fine. Little Robert is doing well and loves his “shoes.” Drop us a letter and give us all the latest scuttlebutt. Regards to the boys.

Thanks again,
Mr. & Mrs. “Rosy”

To learn more about Dr. Julius Rosenberg, click here to view his obituary.

Death of Roosevelt

1 Reply

April 16, 1945 envelope

Letter Transcription:

April 16, 1945, p. 1

April 16, 45

Dear “Junior” – It is about time you wrote, wondered what was wrong, whether you were transferred, or had another son.

No news from anyone except I see John Willard occasionally, and talk to him about some of officer patients. He is still SOQ. He did get orders to Key West, Fla., but the C.O. went to Wash., D.C., and had them cancelled because John is the only Dr. who knows how to go gastroscopies there. Wally Reese, if you remember, our cribbage partner, is still in Phila. Naval, but doesn’t like it, too many superior Regulars. Had a letter from MacClatchie who is in Brazil – C.O. of Dispensary 150 beds. A letter from Bob O’Donnell, too, but he owes me one from way back. Has Cat Fever Ward – about 20 admissions daily, etc. On every 4^th night also.

April 16, 1945, p. 2

[page 2] Haven’t heard any more from anyone. All are poor writers – but never did expect one from Ralph (Help me) Criss. No news about poor Paul Beard. Heard Buster Hyman was at Portsmouth. One [of] the Marines here was at Bonika.

Had a change of corpsmen – past 4 months, now another [?] picked for X Ray course, 5 mos., he is a chiropractor – big boy 230 lbs and I give him all my colored backaches, pounds hell out of them and they don’t come back. A couple officers – one Hebrew gets it, too. I have a good staff and that makes work more pleasant.

Just finished my ¼ San. Report, and the history of med. activities since war started – Comm. 4 Directive Na Sec Nov. Did you have to do that for your D.M.O.?

April 16, 1945, p. 3

[page 3] Soon will be a year since you reported for duty – isn’t it? Mine will be Aug. 1. I wonder where we go next. Have a good notion to go to Wash., D.C., visit my sister and get some dope about billets. Our C.O. of Colored Ordnance Batt. left today for Ad. Base (Colored Personnel) today, goes to Guam, I suppose, understand the officer pool is there instead of Pearl Harbor.

Heard from my bro-in-law – Kunming, China; and my nephew, you met him in Norfolk, has been in Burma since last July – he made paratrooper, was injured, now is in Air Cargo something.

Am happy to hear your family is getting along fine and I am sure you are very proud of them all. You know David is my favorite name, and intended to have one someday.

April 16, 1945, p. 4

[page 4] We had a little bad luck in January, otherwise there would have been one this coming June.

Have been golfing several times, the weather was unusually good. Today it is raining, foggy and miserable, have the heat turned on.

Well, a good man was buried yesterday in spite of the political differences. Comes a time for all of us to be laid away – whether king, middleman or pauper.

Let me hear from you soon, even if a short line.
Regards to Mrs. Y. and family,
Sincerely,
Ed

My Buick is going fine (32,000 miles).

Leila Roberts

1 Reply

March 26, 1945, p. 1

Letter transcription:

Mar. 26, 1925 [sic 1945]

Dear Friends:

We speak of you folks often, but letter writing just seems to be one of those things we are forever putting off.

We are still in the same spot and from most reports are fortunate to have what we do for there are so many who just can’t find anything.

Our year is practically up and yours is up so I suppose we can both expect most anything but we’ll just sit tight and hope!

We drove down home last week-end and as usual spent most of our time cleaning, but we at least didn’t find any moths on this visit, but there is always plenty of dirt.

I am at our neighbors tonite staying with their baby while they are in

March 26, 1945, p. 2

[page 2] Chicago shopping. We trade off once in a while for its next to impossible to hire anyone.

Joe is a “big surgeon” now – he did 40 circumcisions last month! No promotion in view until next summer according to a fairly reliable source for they no vacancies for Commanders at present.

Joe’s Mother asked me for that pair of blue knit pants I let you use for David so she could make some for Adda Mae’s baby. If you happen to have them with you and aren’t using them would you mind sending them, then I’ll return them if David can still wear them.

Commander Kennedy is still at the station.

We’d enjoy hearing from you sometime if you have a spare minute. Hope all are well.
As ever
The Roberts