Published: November 05, 2009 11:53 pm      

WWII kids played important role on homefront

Cumberland Goes to War kicks off today

CUMBERLAND — Emily Thomas sampled an Oreo-size “ration cake” Thursday to get a taste of what treats were like for American children during World War II.

A fourth-grader at Cresaptown Elementary School, she gave the cake a thumbs-up, despite the absence of a rather major ingredient: sugar.

Because of food rations during World War II, moms in kitchens across the United States used honey and other sweeteners instead of sugar, which was hard to come by, said Jeff Nealis, director of the Queen City Transportation Museum.

“They aren’t too bad, are they?” Nealis asked a group of students.

“I want the recipe,” Thomas said.

Fourth- and fifth-grade students from a number of area schools are visiting the transportation museum for hour-and-a-half tours through next week as part of Cumberland Goes to War, an annual tribute to veterans of World War II. Events for the public start today and continue through Nov. 15.

On Thursday, students from Cresaptown and Lighthouse Christian Academy made model airplanes and victory banners, packed care packages and separated milkweed — all activities children participated in during the war.

“They used it to make life jackets,” Alex Murphy, another Cresaptown fourth-grader, said of the fluffy and buoyant silk inside milkweed pods. From 1944 to 1945, Americans collected more than 25 million pounds of milkweed, students learned Thursday.

This is the first year the museum has offered the educational event, called “World War II Kids on the Homefront,” said Sharon Nealis, executive director of the Allegany County Historical Society.

Museum volunteer Bob Armstrong helped the students assemble model airplanes, explaining that wartime children built 500,000 models to help train civilian spotters, who watched for enemy planes.

“The children were making models for a very serious, important reason,” he said, adding that after Pearl Harbor, many feared America would be attacked again.

Other students tried to imagine what it would have been like if their dads had been fighting in the war, writing notes that would be sent as V-mail, or Victory Mail. To decrease the bulk and weight of mail, postal workers took photographs of the letters and sent the much-lighter film overseas.

“I want you to come home, but I know you can’t,” fourth-grader Lyssa Wilhelm wrote to her father in the imagined scenario.

“My dad knew how it felt ’cause his dad went to a war when he was young, when he was like a teenager,” Wilhelm said. “And my mom’s brother went into the Marines as a teenager, I think.”

Destiny Spiker found a relative’s name on the Allegany County honor roll, a listing of all Allegany County residents who fought in World War II that hangs on several walls in the museum.

“What’s the name?” Jeff Nealis asked as students peered at the wall of names, constructed by Allegany County schoolchildren in 1945.

“Spiker,” Destiny said. “James O. ‘O’ is for Owen. ...There it is!”

“And that’s your great-grandpap’s?” Nealis said.

“Yeah,” Spiker said. “Pretty cool.”

Contact Kristin Harty Barkley at kharty@times-news.com.