With Our Boys in Service theme for BWAHS meeting on Tuesday, Jan. 8

By LENNY C. LEPOLA

News Assis­tant Man­ag­ing Editor

With Our Boys in Ser­vice in World War II is the theme for the Jan­u­ary Big Wal­nut Area His­tor­i­cal Soci­ety meet­ing. Fol­low­ing the instal­la­tion of 2013 offi­cers and a brief busi­ness meet­ing, Myers Inn Museum Cura­tor Polly Horn will present the pro­gram at 7:30 p.m. Tues­day, Jan­u­ary 8, in the meet­ing room of the Myers Inn Museum at 45 South Colum­bus Street in Sunbury.

Crip­pled from child­hood, Bill Whit­ney had to sit with the town ladies and knit socks for sol­diers dur­ing The Great War. This expe­ri­ence hum­bled him and left him with a great rev­er­ence for the men who fought for our coun­try. Twenty years later when his daugh­ter Polly was learn­ing to knit, Bill would shout across the room, “Knit One, Purl Two”, which was the pat­tern he used to knit the top of socks for the soldiers.

Years went by, Pearl Har­bor was bombed, Bill and Mar­ian Whit­ney owned The Sun­bury News, and once again boys and men from the com­mu­nity were enlist­ing and being drafted to serve their coun­try. Bill made the deci­sion to give every ser­vice­man from the com­mu­nity a free sub­scrip­tion to the news­pa­per while they were in the ser­vice. In turn he asked the sol­diers to write back and tell about their expe­ri­ences. Bill col­lected these let­ters and turned them into a col­umn “With Our Boys in Ser­vice” which ran weekly in the newspaper.

Before long the com­mu­nity stretched over much of Delaware County. Women as well as men joined the armed forces. All were eli­gi­ble for a sub­scrip­tion if the par­ents sent Bill a mil­i­tary address. Let­ters went through cen­sor­ship so they often looked like Swiss cheese when Bill got them; but both mil­i­tary per­son­nel and the folks at home looked for­ward to keep­ing up with the war through the eyes of their native sons and daughters.

Early in the war, Bill made an error and demoted a sol­dier instead of pro­mot­ing him so he instructed Mar­ian to be sure this did not hap­pen again. She reli­giously clipped each col­umn and pasted them into a loose-leaf scrap­book which she kept indexed by sol­diers’ names. Bill only needed to look in the book to see the last entry for a sol­dier to know his rank and whereabouts.

At the end of the war the scrap­book was left on the shelf and for­got­ten. In 1971, when Mar­ian was sell­ing the news­pa­per to John Whit­ney and Jack Brehm, Polly was help­ing her clean out the files and saw the scrap­book tossed in the trash. Mar­ian said it was just a scrap­book of mem­o­ries no one would be inter­ested in again.

Polly took the scrap­book and kept it at Com­mu­nity Library until she was approach­ing retire­ment, and decided it was time to do some­thing about this part of our com­mu­nity his­tory. With the help of library staff each page was scanned, printed and put into a note­book for the library shelf. Polly went on to make a Pow­er­Point pre­sen­ta­tion fea­tur­ing many of the men and women fea­tured in the scrapbook.

Polly Horn was born and raised in Sun­bury, spend­ing much of her child­hood in The Sun­bury News office and Com­mu­nity Library. Fol­low­ing grad­u­a­tion from Lake For­est Col­lege, she spent three years as a social worker in the Cleve­land slums then mar­ried and moved to Delaware. then even­tu­ally back to Sun­bury with her hus­band Jack Brehm and chil­dren David, Stephanie and Bradd.

Once again Polly found her­self work­ing at The Sun­bury News and Com­mu­nity Library. Fol­low­ing the death of her hus­band in 1982 she became a full time employee in the library. In 2005 she retired as Library Direc­tor and ded­i­cated her­self to the ren­o­va­tion of the for­mer Hop­kins House and the for­ma­tion of the Myers Inn Museum, where she is now the cura­tor. Polly and her hus­band Bob live in Sunbury.

On Jan­u­ary 8 every­one is invited to revisit World War II though the eyes of 917 local ser­vice­men and women. Marian’s Scrap­book is avail­able online at the Big Wal­nut Area His­tor­i­cal Soci­ety web­site at < BigWalnutHistory.og under the Local His­tory but­ton >.

If there is inclement weather be cer­tain to check the web­site above to be sure the pro­gram has not been cancelled.

The Myers Inn Museum, located at the south­west cor­ner of his­toric Sun­bury Square, is open from 12 noon to 3 p.m. Thurs­days through Sun­days and 10 a.m. to 3 p.m. on Saturdays.

Posted by Gary Henery on Jan 3 2013. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS Feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.