1945
/It was a sunny day in April on 55th Road in Elmhurst, Queens. I was almost six years old. Alice Harrington, who lived across the street, had invited me to her play house, built by her grandfather. The wooden house with white walls and green shutters had a realistic gabled roof and benches inside where we could sit. The little house was in the middle of a garden, so in the spring and summer time it seemed to me an enchanted cottage.
In 1945 I had little knowledge of the war raging in Europe and Asia. Once in a while there would be air raids, and we would have to turn off our lights and close our shades. I remember searchlights in the night sky coming, I assumed, from nearby LaGuardia Airport.
Some of our neighbors were fighting in the war. Clifford Olson, who lived next door, was serving in the Army. The Hinchey boys, Jack and Joe, were both in the Navy, as was my piano teacher’s son, Sam Tarrant. On the next street, 56th Avenue, a gold star pennant hung in a dingy window, a sign, I learned later, that another mother had lost a son fighting a war thousands of miles away.
In those days we could play in the street; few cars interrupted our play, though we had to be wary of the possibility. “I Declare War” was one of our favorite games. With chalk we would draw a large circle in the middle of our road, then divide it into pie-shaped divisions representing countries—Germany, Japan, Italy, England, any country we could think of. Then one of us would bounce a rubber ball on one of the pie-shaped segments and yell, “I declare war on” Germany or Italy or some other remote nation. Everyone would run away, except the kid representing the attacked country. He or she would have to catch the ball—we would try to bounce it very high—and then try to hit one of the other kids with the ball. I am not sure if anyone ever won this war.
Sometimes we would visit Grandma and Grandpa Oberg, a Swedish couple from whom we rented an apartment during the first year of my life. Their grandson Arthur was a bit older than I was. I liked playing with his metal soldiers. In our childish play war was a game, and we were somehow part of it.
I had no concept of the American presidency on that April 12th when Alice and I played in her play house and outside in the garden, where flowers and plants were beginning to recover from the long winter. Then, suddenly, Alice’s mother appeared on the back steps of her house. Soon her neighbors on either side were standing on their steps. I looked down the street and saw a line of housewives, each one on her back steps, each one talking to another, each one wearing a housedress and an apron. They were somber, they were shocked, and they were sad: I could see all that. I heard the word “died” and I knew what that meant. Someone had died, someone important. I knew we were no longer to play our little games. I had to leave the backyard, walk down the narrow driveway, and then cross the street to my home. Someone important was gone, someone who had been president of the United States for over twelve years, for twice my lifetime. I had to be quiet and become part of the vast fabric of mourners.
World War II was to end a few months later, first with V-E Day on May 8, the end of fighting in Europe, and then with V-J Day, the surrender of the Japanese in August. On which day did we walk the two blocks to Queens Boulevard, carrying pots and pans and metal spoons, and who came up with that idea? Queens Boulevard had a few islands marking the traffic lanes; it was a very wide street and hard to cross on one green light, unless we ran. There we were, on an island
in the middle of the boulevard, banging and banging on our pots and pans, making a terrific noise. The crowd was happy. So was I, though I scarcely knew why. Soon I would see Clifford Olson in his Army outfit and the handsome Hinchey brothers in their Navy uniforms. The Gold Star mothers would not see their sons again. Eventually I would learn the name of the president who died on that April day. And after a time we stopped playing "I Declare War."
By Anita G. Gorman
From: United States
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