BRATTLEBORO-The three remaining members of the class of 1944 didn't spend a lot of time together in high school, but these women have remained lifelong friends.
Now, at their recent 80th high school reunion visit, Sylvia Smith Morse, of Guilford, Janice Pratt Martin, of West Brattleboro, and Alice Anderson Stockwell, of Vernon, reminisce about their teenage years.
The last of almost 100 students graduated from Brattleboro High School in 1944, they were all children of the Great Depression. Their freshman year was punctuated by the Dec. 7, 1941 attack on Pearl Harbor in Hawaii, which ushered the United States into World War II.
Their memories unblemished, their laughter vibrant, the group travelled through their years of schooling, finishing one another's sentences, each adding to the group's collective memories.
They try to remember what one refers to as "the romance of those two teachers." They talk over one another, digging to remember their names.
"Harold Chaffey and Rachel Cole," an amused Martin responds.
"Oh, yes," states Morse. "Rachel Cole used to go and sit on Harold Chaffey's desk. He used to teach the college course."
"They did end up getting married," Martin chimes in.
"We thought they were ancient," says Morse, "but they might have been in their 30s or 40s."
[Editor's note: Public records show that Harold Leland Chaffey would have been 44 years old in 1944 and his bride, Rachel Cole Chaffey, would have been 28. They married in Vernon in 1942.]
School days
Brattleboro High School students were divided into tracks, which included the general course, the college preparatory course, the commercial course, and the agricultural course.
While only 5% of the public had a college degree in 1940, high school was designed more to prepare students more for life than for more academics.
"Freshmen year, how many weeks did we spend learning to make celery soup?" Stockwell asks. "The teacher added something every week, and then she'd give a long talk about it. I thought we'd never finish that recipe!"
"I had Dorothy Chittenden for home ec," Martin adds. "We weren't in the same class."
The three 98-year-olds sound like three teenagers enjoying a cherry Coke after school - something many classmates experienced at Evans Confectionary and Luncheonette next to the Paramount Theater on Main Street, where all three remember crowding into the tiny booths.
"I spent a lot of time there having a cherry Coke and a hot dog," Stockwell says. "It's no wonder I'm here, eating all that junk!"
Everyone chortles. Stockwell will turn 99 in December.
All three women work vigorously at keeping their bodies in shape as they have all their lives. Each of them walk every day, something they also did as children. And one mentions how she tries to continue stretching by doing jigsaw puzzles and reaching to pick up dropped pieces from the floor.
"Things are so different now. You don't walk anywhere. You used to walk everywhere," remarks Stockwell. "When I stop and think of the miles that I walked as a child and as a teenager, it's a wonder I've got any feet," she says as she stretches to touch her toes.
Stockwell made the half-hour walk from Chestnut Street to the high school (now the Brattleboro Municipal Center) on Main Street, since no school buses ran in town. Morse walked to school from Canal Street. Martin had to take the bus into town each day from Dummerston, limiting her ability to participate in after-school activities.
"We didn't have backpacks then, and those books I didn't use were heavy!" says Stockwell, amused.
"I did use my books," add Morse, who was in the college preparatory track. "One teacher was so tough. He would give you 10 or 15 minutes at the beginning of class, and then he would start asking questions.
"Bob Lawson, remember him? He was a redhead. This teacher would ask a question, and Bob and I were the only two people who would raise our hands. But he would call on all the other students in the class and no one could answer his question.
"He finally called on me, and I answered the question correctly. Then he says, 'You've got an A for the rest of the year!' she says, still sounding surprised 80 years later.
"I remember thinking, 'So now what's the point of studying?'"
Everyone laughs again.
Starting a nursing career
In fact, Morse did go on to school after graduation. Both she and Martin qualified for the Cadet Nurse Corps.
According to an article by the National Park Service, "more than 100,000 American women served their country as members of the United States Cadet Nurse Corps." They "saw it as a chance to serve their country while earning valuable career training."
Realizing that a nursing shortage could be harmful both to the war and home fronts, in 1943, Congress appropriated $65 million for the program. Participants needed to be between the ages of 17 and 35 "with a high school diploma and good grades."
The accelerated program allowed women to become registered nurses in 30 months, provided they could then pass the board exams when they had completed their education.
Morse remembers the program, which she took in Cambridge, Massachusetts.
"I had an aunt who lived there, and I knew I didn't want to become an office worker - I had already tried that during high school" she remembers, noting that women had fewer choices in terms of employment at that time.
The course ran three years.
"They gave you room and board and $5 a month for the first six months. Then $10 a month and the last year, you got $15 a month," Morse explains.
Morse's best friend from nurses training called her this year on Nov. 7.
"She said she wanted to call since it was our 80th anniversary of starting nurses training," she says softly. "Where did all that time go?"
Martin also joined the program, though she took her training in Lebanon, New Hampshire and worked at Mary Hitchcock Memorial Hospital. She returned home after the first year.
"I was so young and naïve; it was a hard adjustment for me to be away from home," she says. "I wasn't very worldly."
Martin went on to earn her licensed practical nursing degree from the Thompson School for Practical Nurses and went on to work for Brattleboro Memorial Hospital.
Morse earned her registered nursing degree, then went on to teach practical nursing in Springfield, Vermont. She returned to school after her children were grown and earned another degree, then earned a master's degree in health care planning at Boston College.
"I had a good, long career in the nursing profession," Morse says proudly.
The long shadow of the war
"That war ruined so many lives," says Stockwell, lowering her head and shaking it with sorrow, noting that from 1940, when BHS students were beginning their freshmen year, boys in the classes of 1941, then 1942, and - finally - 1943 were being drafted into the U.S. armed forces as soon as they turned 18.
Many boys left school early to enlist at 17 so that they could choose the branch of the service themselves.
The day of the Pearl Harbor attack is a distinct memory for all three women, though each remembers it differently.
Janice Martin heard the news over the radio with her family at their small farm on Canoe Brook Road in Dummerston.
"We had a radio, and we were gathered around it. I'll always remember President Roosevelt saying, "Dec. 7, 1941, a date which will live in infamy," she remembers, bowing her head.
Sylvia Morse, on Main Street in Brattleboro when she heard the news, went inside the Baptist Church to sit and think about what happened.
Stockwell was 16 and skiing with friends.
"A bunch of us were ski jumping up by the Austine school. I fell pretty hard. I still have a scar where I landed. I came home and had my father put a bandage on it. I'd ripped my ski pants, and he sewed them up for me. Then I went back up to ski again. I think I was a selfish teenager. I didn't want to think about war."
But Alice Stockwell had to grow up hastily at a tender age. When she was 8 years old, her mother died of sepsis. Penicillin wouldn't be widely available until after World War II.
"She was pregnant with her fifth child and had a bad infection. [...] Mother was in the hospital, and we were told there was nothing to be done. All four of us kids and my father went to visit her, and she just lay there in the bed," she says sadly.
That was the year the family didn't celebrate Christmas.
"All four of us kids hung up our stockings Christmas Eve and, in the morning, they were all empty," she says. "My father was so overwhelmed he'd forgotten about Christmas that year."
As he was able to gather his life back together after this massive loss, Stockwell's father pulled Christmas together a few weeks later.
"In January that year, my father realized what happened and us kids all got a huge toboggan and skis," she says, her voice bravely rising at the recollection.
Growing up fast
In fact, all three women were shouldered with responsibilities that many youngsters today would likely not have to endure.
Janice Martin was the eldest.
"We had to be responsible, there was no two ways about it. You had to do it," she says.
"When I was 15, my mother was very sick for a while. My cousins lived with us, and their father, plus the four of us," Martin says. "I had to cook, clean, and do all that, plus go to school. [...] I was the one who had to put supper on the table for all those people."
"When my father wasn't around, I shoveled coal, brought in the wood. When you don't have a mother, it really affects you," says Stockwell.
All three women worked after-school jobs.
Alice Stockwell would get out of school at 12:40 p.m. and walk down Main Street to Lee's Bakery, where she would work the rest of the afternoon. Then she would change her clothes and usher at the Paramount Theatre until 9 p.m. She earned 25 cents an hour.
"That was big money then," she recalls.
"I had to walk alone all the way home to Chestnut Street in the dark, and that was frightening," Stockwell says.
"I used to hide behind the trees whenever a car came along. I was worried that bad things would happen to me out alone at night, walking all that way."
Then there was the town-wide curfew for children.
"The fire department siren went off every night at 9:10 p.m., and no one was supposed to be out on the street after that," says Martin, who worked at Woolworths on Main Street in the office, where she did "a bunch of little things."
Sylvia Morse babysat.
"Most girls charged 10 cents an hour. I had this one family with two boys that were just awful," she says, laughing. "I charged them 25 cents an hour because I figured I had earned it. They never called me back, which was exactly what I had in mind."
Everybody guffaws.
'My father just couldn't cope'
The women remember never taking their earnings for granted.
"We were children of the Great Depression," says Stockwell.
"But we didn't always know it," adds Martin, "because everybody was poor."
"Yes," says Morse. "Remember that saying? 'Use it up...Wear it out … Make it do … Or do without'?"
Stockwell shares a memory from when she was in the eighth grade, when the nurse came to the school to weigh each student.
"We had to take our shoes off. I had holes in my socks, and I was so embarrassed. There were four of us with no mother, which was sad. My father just couldn't cope," she says.
"He would threaten to send us to Kurn Hattin School, and oh, how I wish he had!" Stockwell continues.
The group begins to confer about others they knew who needed to go to the residential school in Westminster for children whose families couldn't care for them.
Then the mood turns as the women begin to remember happier times.
Morse recalls that when she would be home for the summer, she would be responsible for making dinner, as her mother worked in an insurance office.
"When my sister was at camp, I would put together a potato salad, and when my mother came home, we would go up to Deyos' Swimming Hole up Route 30, have a picnic," she says, pleased at the thought.
Stockwell joins in the memory.
"Yes! When we were kids, we would walk up behind the Retreat, where there was a swimming hole. I was a lifeguard there one summer."
That swimming hole was erased by the flood and hurricane of September 1938, which changed the path of the West River.
"Oh, yes! I remember," says Morse. "Stanley Wilson was a lifeguard up there. He taught swimming lessons. I could do a good sidestroke, but he wanted to teach me the crawl, and I wouldn't do it. I didn't like to get my face in the water," she says.
"I think I was the student who disappointed him the most," she says with a wistful smile.
"We used to go swimming in Canoe Brook in Dummerston," says Martin, joining in, "Oh, my, that water was so cold!"
"I remember standing on the dock at the swimming hole one day," says Stockwell, "and all these chicken heads were floating down the river. That was back when the farmers could throw things in the river. They would have to close down the swimming hole now and again because the water would get so contaminated."
Root beer and dancing
Memories of summertime brings cheer back to the group.
One shared memory: exploding root beer.
"We used to make root beer during the summer," says Martin. "We had a bottle capper, and if you didn't get the cap on the square, the bottle would break."
Everyone laughs.
All three women would use any empty bottles they could find to fill with the sweet treat, as all were made of thick glass at that time and recycled.
"My father made a big batch," says Morse, "but he stored it in a closet in the empty apartment next door in case it blew up."
Root beer was made with bottle of Hires extract, sugar, and yeast, which combined to create the bubbles for the homemade drink. It was usually brewed in the summer, when it would be warm enough for the yeast to grow quickly.
More memories bubble up to the surface.
There were dances on Saturday night at the International Order of Odd Fellows (at what would later become the Shriners' Club is now the Heart Rose Club) and dances at the Community Center with Dick Perry and his Orchestra.
"I used to date one of the trumpet players. Every once in a while, he'd come down and dance with me," says Morse wistfully.
"Do you remember Elijah Prouty?" asks Stockwell. "He lived on Western Avenue. Oh, he was a wonderful dancer. You just felt like you were floating," she says with a dreamy smile.
"We'd get together for parties on Saturday nights," says Morse. "There were parties at people's houses after the football games."
What would they do at these parties?
"There was music, and some dancing," says Morse. "Barbara would play the piano. We'd play spin the bottle."
"I remember!" says Stockwell with a happy smile. "One of the girls had a cousin who had come home from the Navy. He was in uniform that night, and I had an angora sweater. He got covered with it," she says, giggling.
The class of 1944 had their junior prom in a special hall at the Brattleboro Retreat. Lined with fancy woodwork, wooden floors, and a massive stone fireplace, it was a grand room for the annual event. B.H.S. also hosted regular dances on the third floor of the high school building.
Alice Stockwell stops to ask a question.
"Do you realize that in high school there were no drugs?" she ponders. "A few people smoked cigarettes. I tried smoking once, and I didn't like it. Of course, when all the boys came back from the service, they all smoked because the government gave them free cigarettes, and they all came back hooked."
Love and marriage
Sylvia Smith married fellow classmate Robert Morse, who served stateside and was awarded his diploma in absentia during graduation ceremonies, which took place on D-Day.
"He didn't want to be drafted, so he joined the Air Force. He was president of the class, a big football player. We started dating in November of that year," she says.
Alice Anderson married Donald Stockwell.
"He was five years older. I met him after he got home at the Oak Room in town," she says.
Her husband served with the North American Division of the Air Transport Command of the U.S. Army Air Corps in the European, Middle East and North African theater of operations.
"Planes would crash in the mountains, and there would be all these bodies. It wasn't very pleasant. Later, he was transferred to Maine, where he had to take care of German prisoners," she says.
The couple married in 1953 at Centre Congregational Church in Brattleboro and had three children, two boys and a girl.
"Just like me," adds Martin, who met her husband while working at Woolworth's when she was 17. Her husband, Henry Martin, was a veteran of the Army, having served in the European theater.
"He was three months older than me," says Martin smiling at the memory.
The pair married in 1946.
There was food rationing, some of which ended with the war, but sugar continued to be rationed until June of 1947.
"People were neighborly," says Stockwell, "and we all took care of each other, especially during the war."
"I miss the music," says Morse, "'Swing and Sway' with Sammy Kaye, Glenn Miller, Frank Sinatra..."
"Guy Lombardo and Lawrence Welk," adds Martin.
Three hours has quickly passed. There are hugs and smiles and pictures are taken.
"It's just wonderful to think that the three of us are still here," says Stockwell. "It's just so nice to have good friends for life."
This News item by Fran Lynggaard Hansen was written for The Commons.