THE VIRGINIAN-PILOT
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: Sunday, August 13, 1995 TAG: 9508130686
SECTION: FRONT PAGE: A2 EDITION: FINAL
COLUMN: EDITOR'S NOTEBOOK
SOURCE: [JACK DORSEY]
LENGTH: Medium: 70 lines
Nearly four months ago, we began asking our readers to submit their photos and memories of World War II - especially what they were doing around Aug. 15, 1945, both home and abroad when V-J Day was declared.
We never expected either the volume or quality of your efforts.
We were overwhelmed with nearly 300 responses. Some were vacationers passing through from Texas, Arizona and California, but most were folks in Hampton Roads who recalled ``as if it was yesterday'' the end of a war that had changed their lives forever and changed this nation's and this community's heart and soul.
Once reluctant to talk about heroics and tragedies of the war, you suddenly wanted to tell us your stories, your heartaches and your joys, many of them pent up for 50 years.
You wrote War and Peace-length letters, sent entire scrapbooks, cruise books, irreplaceable photos that we have nervously guarded until we can return them to you, and handwritten notes, the penmanship of which varied from perfect to, well, pretty hard to read.
But the moldy attic smells from your 50-year-old newspapers, letters and pictures delighted this stuffy, sterile office as we pored over your tales.
We aging ``war babies'' were transfixed by stories of how our mothers roamed American towns, especially those near military complexes like Norfolk, only to find apartment owners who didn't want to rent to people with children; of how you saved metal cans and did without the luxuries we now take for granted; how a Catholic priest in Lynchburg gave up the metal fence around the church cemetery to be recycled for the war effort; of Victory Gardens, blackouts, ration cards and ironies.
You sent us your wedding photos taken during the war - young couples in Army, Navy and Marine Corps uniforms, many of whom are still together today, already having celebrated their ``golden'' anniversaries.
We heard from people like Charlotte Dawson of Cheriton on the Eastern Shore who worked in a factory ``making little rubber rings that went someplace in an airplane engine'' and from former Navy man Moses Hudson of Norfolk who was in Leyte Gulf in the Philippines when he heard the Japanese had surrendered: ``The Japs just gave up and we all jumped overboard for a swim . . . in the middle of the night.''
Retired lawyer Bernie Levin dropped off a 3-foot long, foot-high glossy photo showing in panoramic view his old destroyer, the Converse, with its entire crew standing on a pier at the Washington Navy Yard. Although it was left without an address and was lost for three days in the inner-office mails, the find generated an idea to replicate it with a similar view using a modern-day destroyer from Norfolk.
You'll see the results on Monday when the special Victory in Japan Day ``War Bonds'' special is published.
Our biggest fear, unfortunately, has been realized. That is that you sent us so much material that it could not all go into the section. For that, we apologize. It was not that we weren't interested, we were just inundated.
There was outright sorrow on our faces as we cut and squeezed, juggled ads and tightened up the copy more, only to find there wasn't enough space to fit all the stories and photos into your section.
The fact a story is not included is not a reflection of its quality, merely the economy of not being able to afford unlimited open news pages.
But we do promise that you will treasure our end product. We were all proud to be able to present it to you. MEMO: Jack Dorsey, a staff writer for The Virginian-Pilot, has covered
military affairs for more than a decade.
by CNB