"We graduated one week after D-Day. D-Day was the sixth and we graduated on the 13th. There were guys in our class who had been drafted before they graduated."
We have about 33 letters Stewart wrote during that time, starting with one on March 15, 1944 and ending with one in late 1946, which give a vivid and detailed picture of the impact that the war had on his life. I've decided to transcribe those letters, annotate them, and post them here from time to time as a tribute to him. The letters are written mostly to dad, sometimes to mother.
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| Stewart as a high school senior |
March 15, 1944
Dear
Dad,[1]
I
am sorry that I have not written to you for a long time, and I will not try to
excuse myself for it, but I will attempt to show you some of the things that
are keeping me busy.
Mother
made me stay home from school[2]
today because my leg is swollen just above the ankle. I must have received a
hard knock when I didn't notice it, and the resultant bruise has hurt some
ligament or something. But, however, I think that it will be okay soon.[3]
On
Monday, March 6, I was called into Mrs. Leeuwen's (sp?) room (the student
counselor) and was told about a job in a control laboratory at Spencer-Kellogg
and Sons,[4]
a linseed oil concern. It is located between some elevators near 25th street....[5]
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| The Spencer-Kellogg factory in Minneapolis where Stewart worked |
Heretofore
they have hired only University students, but so many are being drafted that
they had to appeal to Marshall. I will be able to keep the job all the time
that I go to the University, thus being able to earn my way more easily. My job
is to grind the meal, weigh out 5-gram samples to the nearest milligram, find
the moisture content, and the oil content, all the while keeping each sample
assorted. There are four regular expellers with three shifts a day. There are
about six special expellers with three shifts. Moisture is found by placing a
tin of meal in an electric oven for 75 minutes and then weighing again to find
difference, thus finding the amount of moisture. The oil is found by running
carbon tetrachloride through a sample of the meal wrapped in a piece of filter
paper. The carbon tetrachloride is boiled off after three hours, and the flash
and oil is weighed to determine percent of oil. Meal sold to the farmers is
guaranteed to have at least 3.5% oil, and the average runs about 4.5% according
to our tests. If the oil content were too high, however, we would be losing
money in our sale of oil.[6]
On
March 31 and April 1, a special tournament will be held at South St. Paul High
School, and I am writing an original oration for the event. I think I shall
give an oration on the merits of the Pan American Union[7]
and its relation to the world today.
On
about February 16th, E. Stanley Jones[8]
spoke at Marshall. Two or three nights later, I heard him speak at Wesley
Temple to about 300 young people from different churches. Although he is a
small man, his knowledge and character are limitless.
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| Wesley Temple in Minneapolis |
This
"six-weeks" period is seven weeks long, so we won't get our report
cards marked until next Tuesday.
On
February 24, the Young People's Group[9]
had charge of the Thursday night Lenten Service, and Millicent Myers from the
Pilgrim Federation and I had charge of the devotions. Dr. Powell[10]
spoke on the topic, "If I Had But One Sermon to Preach," which is the
topic for all the ministers who speak at the services.
Since
I have to get up so early to go to work, I am excused earlier from school. I
had only Gym and Study, 5th and 6th anyway, but since Phys. Ed is required 5
days a week for seniors, I have transferred to Track sixth period, and I now go
home for lunch right after 4th. I am getting more sleep out of the arrangement
for no particular reason except that I know that I must get to bed very early
in order to get enough sleep, and so I am getting about 7 1/2 hours a night on
the average.
The
weather is rather inconsistent here. It has snowed several times, but each time
a warm spell follows and melts most of the snow.
I
took the Eddy Test,[11] which
determines if one can qualify for radio technician training in the Navy - just
to see if I could. I passed it, along with almost every other boy that did, but
it does not obligate me to follow it up.
I'm
feeling swell outside of my leg.
Yours
sincerely,
Stewart
P.S.
The desk[12]
arrived this afternoon, and mother is thrilled.
[1] At this time, dad was a
Chaplain in the U.S. Army, based at Fort Lewis, WA.
[2] Stewart was a senior at
Marshall High School in Minneapolis, MN.
[3] Several months later, when
Stewart had his physical when he enlisted in the army, he learned for the first
time that he had a broken fibula, 6 cm above the ankle! His doctor had never
bothered to X-ray the leg. Stewart had been walking with a broken bone in his leg all that time!
[4] Spencer-Kellogg & Sons
was based in Buffalo, NY, but had a plant in Minneapolis as well, and at that
time was probably the largest linseed oil manufacturer in the world.
[5] I lost the image of this
page from iPhoto inexplicably at just this point as I was transcribing it. I can't
find it in Trash or anywhere! Maybe I can recover it from the backup hard drive
at home. Fortunately, only a couple of lines from the letter on this page were
left to transcribe before I lost it.
[6] Spencer-Kellogg was
primarily a manufacturer of linseed oil, but the mash created in the process
was a by-product sold to farmers as feed.
[7] The Pan-American Union was
an organization formed in 1890 to promote cooperation among the
countries of Latin America and the U.S. It was replaced in 1970 by the OAS -
the Organization of American States.
[8]
E. Stanley Jones
(1884–1973) was a Methodist missionary who worked in India. He is remembered
chiefly for his interreligious lectures to the educated classes in India,
thousands of which were held across India during the first decades of the 20th
century. He spent much time with Ghandi and the Nehru family. Gandhi challenged
Jones to include greater respect for the mindset and strengths of the Indian
character in his work. This effort to contextualize Christianity for India was
the subject of his seminal work, The
Christ of the Indian Road, which sold more than 1 million copies worldwide
after its publication in 1925 and reputedly was a prime influence in Martin
Luther King Jr.'s commitment to non-violence.
[9] This was a group of
teen-agers at the First Congregational Church in Minneapolis which is where our
family attended church while dad was in the army.
[10] This was
probably Dr. John Walker Powell, who followed dad as minister of Como Avenue
Congregational Church. He was also a lecturer at the University
of Minnesota, teaching classes in English and Biblical literature.
[11] Officially the RTST (Radio
Technician Selection Test), it was commonly named after William C. Eddy, a
retired officer and authority in electronics who came out of retirement after
Pearl Harbor and helped to develop this test in response to an urgent need for
radio technicians.
[12] This is the spinet desk
which dad built for mother in a woodworking shop at Fort Lewis and which Suzie
now has.
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