Hazel Nevis writes from Glendale to her son Arnie at Yale University in Army Air Force Technical Training Command. Arnie was infamous in our family lore for his standing up to his father at age 16 about not going into the family business — Bill Nevis ran an accounting company and a side business of printing, and he expected his sons to join the company, which Leonard later did. Here we see that he had decided to become a Presbyterian minister after the war.
Caltech classmate Don Pickrell writes from Camp Crowder, Missouri, to Arnie at Yale University. Don is in the signal corps.
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Two Lauras are mentioned here. One is Arnie's younger sister Laura Nevis, who recently had chicken pox. The other is Arnie's paternal Aunt Laura Mello. Arnie's cousins Wilfred, Stanley and Edwin are his Aunt Laura's children. Ed Mello died the war on February 21, 1945.
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Don M. Stadt writes from Navy in the war's Pacific Theater about mutual friends, his "butch" haircut, and recent leisure activities.
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Private Clifford I. Cummings, a classmate from the California Institute of Technology, writes from Camp Crowder, Missouri (now Fort Crowder). Apparently both Cliff and Arnie were extremely keen to see action overseas in the war. ETG probably references the Electronics Training Group at Caltech.
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A V-mail letter from Arnie's first cousin, Leslie Hastings Wolfe, Jr. (on his mother's side). Sgt. Les Wolfe was a tail-gunner in Italy during World War II. The letter was posted on March 26, 1944, but mailed to Arnie's former North Carolina address and then forwarded up to Yale University, where Arnie received it at the end of April. (Cousin Les died in August 3 of that year on his return to the U.S., when the plane he was taking crashed on takeoff from Miami.)
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Arnie's mother, Mary Hazel Nevis, writes with news about the family and about what is in bloom in the large garden at their home in Glendale — sitting on a double lot with a veritable grove of citrus trees, plum and apricot trees, and flowers, as Hazel was an avid gardener.
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Ralph Winger wrote from Pasadena with news about classmates and his Cal Tech commencement. We learn that Arnie recently had the mumps.
On leave from Army Air Forces training in Connecticut, Arnie visited New York City to see the sights and attend church services. I am not sure which church he would have gone to, as the only church near Rock Center is St. Patrick's Cathedral, and it seems unlikely he would attend a Catholic mass.
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Arnie must be in the Winchester Hospital in West Haven, Connecticut started in 1918 as a tuberculosis center, now the West Haven Veterans Administration Medical Center. (This hospital was established and named for William Wirt Winchester, who died of tuberculosis, by his wife Sarah Lockwood Pardee, who also acquired and built the Winchester Mystery House, cited earlier in this blog.) He may have had the mumps at this time.
next post March 12, 1944
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