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Written by: o2bnfrance 5/21/2006 10:28:25 PM
Did we forget them or just take them for granted? Maybe we thought women being sole leaders of their households were only products of Baby Boomers and Generation X. Maybe our recollection beyond those generations only reflects the June Cleaver image of a woman in heels baking cookies for Wally and Beaver, while waiting for Ward to come home from the office.

Today, we call them “solo ladies”, but solo ladies existed long before Baby Boomers and Generation X came along. The so-called Greatest Generation had many, and I knew several of them.

Yet, it wasn’t until recently that I truly understood the hardships and loneliness they experienced during World War II. I am embarrassed that it took so long for me to understand the weariness behind aging eyes that saw and felt so much more than what they reveal – silent moments of fighting back tears; dancing alone in the living room on Saturday nights; or, opening that dreaded telegram from the war department.

It was not an epiphany that opened my eyes to the essence of what those solo ladies experienced; it was several things that dovetailed into a unified understanding of what many people of the Greatest Generation experienced. It was my growing passion to learn more about World War II, a quest that eventually took me to the D-Day beaches of Normandy, France. It was tales from the owners of the inn where I stayed, who had been children living in London during the war and had spent many horrid days and nights in air raid shelters. It was the elderly Frenchman in a café in Arromanches who shook the hand of every American who walked in and thanked them for his freedom, even though many of them had not been born until long after the war's end and others had been no more than mere children at that time. And, ultimately, it was the grave markers at the American Cemetery in Colleville Sur Mer that drove home the reality of the thousands of solo ladies who went about their lives, because they had no other choice.

Where many people saw before them evidence of the multitude of war deaths, I saw broken lives left behind by those deaths. For every white cross, Star of David, and other religious symbol implanted upon that lush, green hillside overlooking the English Channel, there had been a solo lady somewhere in the U. S. going about her life the best she could. She may have been a mother, a wife, a fiancée, a sister, or a daughter, but some part of her life now rests forever on that hillside in France.

Hardly a week goes by that I do not read an obituary about the passing of another combat veteran of World War II – they’re in their nineties, now. But does anyone recognize the solo ladies of that war? They fought a battle, too, and they are also beginning to leave us. Yet, when we read their tributes in the obituaries, we read only that they were cherished mothers and wives, who loved to cook, sew, and be with their grandchildren. That tells us who they were in their recent years. But who were they during World War II, when so many lives were affected by so many unusual and uncontrollable events? Who were those brave women responsible for keeping the home front intact?

They were the riveting Rosies, the letter carriers, the cab drivers, and the farmers who took over “men’s jobs” by day and cared for their children by night, making their ration stamps go as far as they could, cooking, washing clothes, helping with homework, staying up late into the night mending shirts, socks, and dresses, and still finding time to write a letter or two before finally going to bed. Many times, the only thing that gave them the strength to finish their letters and make it through another day were the last few words from their children before bedtime: “Tell Dad we love him.”

In the past several years on Memorial Day, I silently thanked the warriors who fought to save a civilization. In my tributes this year, I will include the forgotten warriors, the solo ladies of the Greatest Generation who kept the home fires burning, the families together, and the love flowing to another generation.

This tribute will not slight the solo ladies of subsequent generations - the Baby Boomers and today's Generation X. They, too, experienced their share of hardship and loneliness during the Korean War, the Vietnam War, Desert Storm, and the other conflicts where American lives were lost. For the solo ladies of Operation Iraqi Freedom, their struggles continue today. They should all be recognized for their courage as sole leaders of their households.

But my personal tributes will go to the women of World War II, the women who virtually lived in a world without dependence on male decision makers and breadwinners. Just as the young military recruits were thrust into an unfamiliar way of life, the women of the Greatest Generation themselves faced such challenges, absent the dangers of being shot at. But their survival, as well as the survival of their families, held similar risks, simply making it from one day to the next with what they had.

This courageous group of women pioneered the standards for today’s independent woman. For the first time in the lives of many of those women, they were in control; they were the decision makers; they were the breadwinners. And, in my mind, that also makes them war heroes, uncelebrated warriors that we must never forget.

o2bnfrance

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