Welcome to the Putnam County Museum
"My Boys"
Shared by Bev Wagoner
The text in this document is copied from letters Bev wrote "Mommie, Daddy and “the three little girls”" while she was in the Army. The original text from her letters is in regular print; explanatory notes, written 65 years later, are printed in italic.
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Bev writes: "This project is so dear to my heart and I could never ever have accomplished it if Mommie had not saved all those letters, if Todd had not encouraged me, solved all the production problems, kept reminding me to “Keep Calm and Carry On”, and if Beth had not helped us when the technical problems got complicated. Thank you."
Read a short preview of "My Boys" below, and download the PDF to view more.
Beverly Wagoner
November 11, 2011
"Those of us of a certain age will remember where we were and what we were doing on December 7, 1941. I was in nursing school at the Methodist Hospital in Indianapolis. The student nurses lived in Wile Hall in the 1800 block of Capitol Avenue and were all shocked, horrified, and probably scared when we heard the news. My brother, Stanley, joined the Air Corps a few weeks later. My brother, Harlan, would enter the Navy ROTC program at Harvard and would become a Navy pilot. When I graduated from nursing school in 1944 I tried to enlist in the Navy but was told I needed to have my tonsils removed which I did. I had an emergency appendectomy in November of 1944 and the Navy told me I had to wait for one year after surgery so I applied to the Army Nurse Corps and they accepted my application but recommended deferment because of the surgery until March.
On April l, I entered into active service at Billings General Hospital at Fort Benjamin Harrison in Indianapolis. I remember telling Mommie and Daddy that I wanted to enlist and they did not object. How must they have felt to have 3 of their children in the war? None of us was ever in harm’s way but we certainly could not have been sure of that..." (download the PDF to read the rest of Bev's story)