How They Met

In looking back at the past one finds answers to the present. Here, for example, is how my mother met my father:

During that fall of ’44 a young woman from Black River Falls, Wisconsin was looking to move on with her life as well. After graduating high school and attending nearby Sparta Business College, Carol Thompson, and her sister Marian both found jobs as civilian secretaries at Camp McCoy, a military training facility in west central Wisconsin. (Camp McCoy also served as a German and Japanese Prisoner of War Camp during the war – in fact, in early 1945 three Japanese prisoners escaped from McCoy and were on the loose in the Wisconsin countryside for two weeks before being recaptured at a golf course near La Crosse.)

For three years Carol and Marian had been commuting the 27 miles from Black River Falls to Camp McCoy every workday, and they considered themselves lucky to do so. For two small town gals born and raised on a farm, working on an army base in the midst of the war effort was like a door opening out to the rest of the world. It didn’t take them long to start wondering what else might be out there.  So on October 23, 1944 they boarded a train in Black River Halls and moved down to Milwaukee. Having never before been in a city the size of Milwaukee, having no contacts or job leads, not even a place to stay, it was a gutsy move.

Indeed, arriving in a city full of rumbling streetcars, anxious war news and standing lines for rationed nylons was quite the eye-opener. But energy, determination and good fortune won out, and within a few days the girls had found an affordable apartment. However, the difference between making it in the big city and going back home defeated depended on their finding a job. Here fortune smiled again as their previous Civil Service training and experience at Camp McCoy fit in well with the needs of the Veterans Administration. They were hired on as clerk-stenographers. Carol gladly accepted her assignment - secretarial duty reporting to one Clarence Stolt in the Vocational Rehabilitation Department.

On August 15, 1945 radios and news services flashed the much anticipated word that Japan had surrendered. In what came to be known as Victory Over Japan Day, or V-J Day, factories and offices everywhere simply shut down. In downtown Milwaukee, as in major cities across the country, everyone stopped what they were doing and poured out into the streets on that summer day for a celebration the likes of which had not been seen before, and likely never will be again. Confetti and paper flew out of office windows. Cars and trolleys were nowhere to be found because every avenue was packed full of people dancing, strangers kissing, everyone walking around with smiles on their faces. World War II was finally over.

It is no exaggeration to say the war had, in one way or another, affected the life of every single American. Now, more than three-and-a-half years after the attack on Pearl Harbor, the victory announcement let loose a torrent of pride, joy and relief. Little doubt that same euphoria extended to every desk and every office in the VA building at 342 North Water Street in Milwaukee.

Office romance was not all that uncommon or frowned upon in those days, as long as it didn’t interfere with getting the job done. Clarence and Carol had been working side by side for a while in a professional manner, but inevitably they started taking notice of one another. More and more she came to admire his intellect and sense of humor. He admired her shy ways and warm smile. “Very nice!” he wrote of her for the first time in the August 30^th entry of his daily journal, this after an office party of the same day – in all likelihood a formal celebration of V-J day.  One day soon after that he slipped a note into the ‘incoming’ basket on her desk - would she like to go out to dinner with him?