The good ol' days

Just continuing with another bit of the story:

For Clarence these were truly good times. In June of ‘51 he and Carol bought their first house, a small Cape Cod style advertised as “the perfect starter home,” at 435 S 68^th  Street in West Allis for $12,500. Then on Feb 11, 1952 a second daughter, Diane Margaret, was born, immediately adding more energy to an already active household. Meanwhile, the job kept him on the go, often requiring travel throughout the state in support of veteran’s job training and financial assistance programs. And as if that wasn’t enough, about this time he started what would become a ten-year stretch of taking night classes in the areas of insurance, business law, accounting, public speaking, even a Spanish class, though by his own account that last one didn’t go so well.

            He was now a busy, family man and clearly family life sat well with him from the beginning. In the coming years, as the girls began to grow up, he would be only too happy to take them skating or hiking at nearby Greenfield Park on the weekends. He himself was almost childlike in his enthusiasm for anything having to do with Christmas time.

            And along with a very understanding wife he had his sense of humor. Unfortunately here is where the written record falls short. But anyone who ever knew C.J. remembered how he could laugh – and make others laugh. One quick example was a line he wrote in a letter to his brother-in-law, Hugh McDaniell, in 1959. Recalling Carol’s first attempts at learning how to drive a car he joked about “how nice it was having fresh meat on the table every night.”

            For fun he still had his monthly poker parties with some of the boys from the office. And whenever he got the chance he liked to take in a Packer game at State Fair Park in Milwaukee, or a Badger football game in Madison.

Then there was baseball. When the Boston Braves moved to Milwaukee in 1953 it introduced the city to major league baseball, and vice versa. The Braves became tenants of the newly built County Stadium and C.J. quickly became a frequent visitor. It would prove to be a brief, star-crossed love affair between Milwaukee and the Braves. Within four years of their arrival the Braves put the city on center stage, winning the World Series in ‘57 and almost winning it again in ‘58. Future Hall of Fame players like Warren Spahn, Hank Aaron and Eddie Mathews became, in those less cynical times, true sports heroes, men who were looked up to as a matter of civic pride. And County Stadium itself became a sports fan’s paradise, where every home game was an event, a packed house full of boisterous fans. In May of ’54 Time magazine went so far as to call the stadium “an insane asylum with bases.”

But the joy, while intense, didn’t last. By the beginning of the ‘Sixties the fortunes of the team began to fade and the support dwindled. In 1965 the Braves played before smaller and smaller crowds, and it was after that season that the team quietly left town and became the Atlanta Braves. For local sports fans it was a painful divorce. Still, no one who experienced firsthand the heyday of the Milwaukee Braves in the 1950s, and C.J. was in that crowd, would ever forget what it once was like.

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?