Deanna Dawson’s front-page article in last week’s News Review brought back so many memories for me. I loved the photos, too. Did anybody notice that the Co-op Food Store was then located where the New Deal Café is now?
I must be one of only a few current residents of Greenbelt who lived here that December 7. I would have been a young teenager, in my sophomore year at Greenbelt High School. I remember that my father was listening to a football game on the radio that Sunday afternoon. He heard the announcer say that many people began leaving the stadium; something important had happened. The next day, we gathered around the radio to hear President Franklin Roosevelt give his now famous “day of infamy” speech about the surprise attack on Pearl Harbor. What I remember most is that most people had never heard of Pearl Harbor. Everyone was asking: “Where, or what, is Pearl Harbor?”
That Christmas, my friend Pat Brown and I, proud of our new accomplishments as members of the Greenbelt Community Band (which had been formed in the summer of 1940), asked Mr. Van Camp, the director of the Catholic choir, if we could bring our instruments and play Christmas carols before Midnight Mass. We persuaded Billy Baxter to come with his cornet; Pat had her flute and I my clarinet and we played carols like, O Little Town of Bethlehem and The First Noel. Back then, Sunday Mass was held at the Greenbelt Theater. The altar was on the stage and the choir was located near the exit door to the left of the stage. Father Fealy from Holy Redeemer church in Berwyn Heights came each Sunday to say Mass. Mrs. Madden accompanied the choir on a little manual organ. The parish of St. Hugh’s was not formed until 1947, when Father Dowgiallo was sent to Greenbelt.
I remember our town as being very quiet in the war years that began that December. The town consisted only of the original homes and the new frame “defense houses.” New cars were not made because everything went for the war effort. Fathers were working overtime and a few of my friends’ mothers even got jobs to fill the positions left by the young men who were drafted into the service. Sugar and other items were rationed. I remember my mother making black-out curtains. My sister Joanne and I even signed up to be airplane-spotters. In later years, Joanne wrote a humorous poem about that and you can read it at the end of her obituary, page 9 of the News Review of January 14, 2016. The poem is titled “Airplane Spotters, 1943.”
At Greenbelt High, there was much turnover in teachers. Our first principal, Mr. Sliker, had been replaced by Mr. Barnhart, a family man who actually lived here in town. The popular science teacher, Mr. Brengle, immediately left to be an officer in the Navy. It seemed like every few months we had a new science teacher. Mrs. Ditman, whose husband was a scientist in Beltsville, was my favorite. I graduated in June of 1944. Our 1944 yearbook, the Pylon, was dedicated to the memory of William Peter Sommers, class of 1942, killed in the South Pacific. His mother, Mrs. Sommers, a friend of our family, became Greenbelt’s first gold-star mother.
It’s wonderful that we can now read about those earlier days in the newly digitized Greenbelt News Review. Every time I’ve gone into the Archives looking to establish a date for things I remember, I’ve been captivated by the number of interesting articles of all kinds. Many thanks to all those who’ve worked to make it easier and more fun to read our town paper. I’m so proud that I’m still listed on the masthead.
