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In my ongoing efforts to discover and share interesting stories about the World War II era, I had rare encounter. I got to interview one of the mechanical engineers who worked at the “city behind the fence.” His daughter and I are members of the same professional women’s group in the Bay area and at a summer retreat, we made a surprising discovering. Her father had worked in one of the plants at Oak Ridge, Tennessee, just twenty-eight miles from where I grew up. In fact, he was assigned to the Y-12 plant where most of U-235, the fuel for […]

Christmas is tomorrow and I am enjoying a few quiet moments listening to my favorite holiday music. This is a welcome respite from my cooking frenzy that produced batches of nuts and bolts, bread pudding, sangria tarts, and my mother’s famous cranberry salad. Each song holds cherished memories of Christmas past and my mother’s southern culinary creations. My ears suddenly perk up when I hear Perry Como crooning, It’s Beginning to Look a Lot like Christmas. Was that one of parents’ favorite holiday tunes? I wondered what music defined Christmas for them and their generation during the war years. Many […]

November is National Veterans and Military Families Month with a multitude of activities held across the country to honor veterans. This past weekend in the Phoenix area there were many worthwhile options: Swing Time 1940’s benefit at Ross Aviation Hangar, parades, musical tributes and ceremonies including the breathtaking solar eclipse at 11:11am at the Anthem Veterans Memorial. Additional celebrations will continue throughout the month, but I am eager to shine a light on projects that you may not know about. While these may be unfamiliar they are worthy examples of how individuals like you can make a difference in the […]

Each month I create a preliminary schedule of potential blog topics, but there’s often an unexpected person, event or activity that grabs my attention that I write about instead. Such is the case today. While I was involved in a flurry of veteran activities in November, the person that inspired me the most was Shana Edwards. This petite, soft spoken high school student, the Arizona winner of the 2017 Voice of Democracy essay contest, was a speaker at the Veterans Day ceremony in Anthem, Arizona. Although I could barely see her from where I sat, her words rose above the […]