Eyewitness 1941: War's onset couldn't stop Christmas celebration
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Former Post-Gazette reporter Frank Matthews.
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Even with the United States newly at war, much about Christmas 1941 was familiar.
"In many ten thousands of homes the lights flick on at dawn," Post-Gazette reporter Frank Matthews wrote on Dec. 25. In those homes, little boys and girls would spy presents around their trees, and shout up the stairways, "Daddy ... he came."
"Daddies and Mommies never get back to bed on Christmas mornings and this one of all Christmases they don't want to," Matthews wrote. "For the United States is the last great nation still able to celebrate fully and this Christmas may well be the last without restraints for a long time."
"That is in the future, however, and this is Christmas 1941 and it is going over big."
Another story described the Christmas Eve activities of Carl Schlossnagle and his family in Munhall, accompanied by a half-dozen photos. Vivian Schlossnagle, age 6, was performing in a Yule pageant at the First Presbyterian Church of Homestead that evening.
"'Oh, Vivian, if you hadn't lost your teeth just before Christmas,' laments Mrs. Schlossnagle as Vivian's smile shows the gap in the front of her upper teeth."
But the young girl "is too happy ... to pay attention to such minor details as the loss of teeth," the reporter wrote. "She is a fairy -- at least for this night."
Lora Lee Small, age 7, lived with her mother and four brothers on the North Side. She had wanted a desk as a present, but she changed her mind on Christmas Eve. "I would rather have the money the desk would cost ... so I could give it to the Red Cross and they could help our soldiers," she told her mother, Edith.
A Dec. 25 story said the youngster had been inspired in part by a movie called "Angels of Mercy" that she had seen the week before.
"I cried about that picture because I just couldn't stand to see those poor wounded soldiers and sick people without any medicine," Lora Lee told a reporter, who wrote that the Pittsburgh chapter of the American Red Cross "yesterday received $15 in cash -- the money Lora Lee's four brothers planned to spend to buy her a desk for Christmas."
The little girl's gift was a substantial one. Adjusted for inflation, her $15 was the equivalent of $222 this year.
There also were stories of charity closer to home. More than 1,000 poor and homeless Pittsburgh residents ate free turkey dinners at several locations around the city, the Post-Gazette reported on Dec. 26. The meals were provided by the Salvation Army, the St. Joseph House of Hospitality and the Pittsburgh Association for the Improvement of the Poor.
That same day's edition predicted "surging crowds in the downtown streets again today, for the stores are having big year-end sales."
"But underneath the surface," things were different, reporter Charles B. Holstein wrote. "Did you notice the next-door neighbor whose son was home from [boot] camp?" he asked.
"Pittsburgh was crowded with men in uniform who, in most instances, were home for only a few hours," he wrote. "And most of them were convinced they would not be home again very soon ... There is work to be done and there are faraway places becoming increasingly familiar to American newspaper readers ..."
A Dec. 25 editorial in the newspaper counseled readers that "These troubled days, too, will pass."
"This Christmas Day may not be merry, in the old sense, but it is a rededication to the principles of the first message to the Judean shepherds -- the message of peace and good will ..."
First Published December 25, 2011 12:00 am
