"Me and the Cavalry" - February 1, 1942

Mary Grace thus titled a page in her scrapbook. She was 18 and a freshman at Washburn in February of 1942.A friend of her mother recruited both Mary and Helen for the U.S.O. that met at the YMCA. She wrote the following in My Life:

Mary in the back yard at home February 1, 1942

You had to attend so many things in order to go to the formal dances held in the Municipal Auditorium once a month with a real band.  I played a lot of pool at the week day meetings.  My parents had a pool table in our basement.  I wasn’t very good on the other hand I wasn’t very bad.  The soldiers from Ft. Riley were in the cavalry and wore boots that were not great to be stepped on during the dances.

Andy, Dante Fabrizzo & Tony, Feb 1, 1942

     Sixty years after Pearl Harbor Mary Grace described the aftermath of Pearl Harbor to Chris when he interviewed her for a class in college:

Andy, Mary & Tony - Feb 1 1942

    After a while the male students at Washburn began to leave school and men started joining the ROTC.  Also many soldiers began using the on campus facilities during the war.  The Air Force and Navy both took classes and lived on Washburn’s campus.  Mary Grace’s sorority, like all other sororities at Washburn, gave up their house for the Air Force’s soldiers to live in. The dormitories were also filled with servicemen, which were mainly from the Navy

She and Ray had met in October 1941, but didn't marry until July 1946. She told Chris that she didn't think the war had affected her life plans all that much, but it did make her love life interesting. In Ray's letters to her while he was briefly serving in the army, it's clear that he asked her to marry him during that time. Less than a year after he joined the Army, he was medically discharged. Mary Grace wrote in My Life that Ray had a hard time adjusting to the rut of going to college, etc.

So she wrote in My Life about those years:

During this time period I was still attending the USO festivities and dating service men that spent time in Topeka.  I had to write lots of letters and received a lot.  They gave me pictures of themselves and I kept track of them.  I almost got engaged to one as Ray and I were always breaking up.

(Your parents not actually getting together is always disconcerting because if they don't happen, you don't happen.)

Mary and her new bicycle

 E.A. operated two service stations in Topeka and did great business repairing cars and trucks during the war because there were no new cars for civilians. She told Chris:

   My father always said that he put us through college with batteries and antifreeze.

    During her college years which happened to be the war years, Mary Grace spent many afternoons working at her dad's downtown shop. She was in charge of gluing into the books the stamps that people used to purchase gas. She also helped her dad deliver repaired cars to their owners. After getting tired of using the bus to go downtown to work, she applied for permission to buy a bicycle. Eventually she was able to buy one at Sears. Then she could ride her bike to work, then put it in the back of her dad's pickup for the trip home. Sometimes on the way home, she'd deliver the cars and her dad would pick her up then and drive her home.

She told Chris that she felt things obviously changed with Pearl Harbor that happened when she was only a couple of months past her 18th birthday.

You had to grow up. Life became serious. I didn’t want to grow up - -