Arnold's Story: March 18, 1949 Pat

Pat's spelling is bad in a few places. For example, I think illuminate in the second paragraph is eliminate. Pat spent time in Winnipeg, Canada, and sometimes it shows up in the language, such as with "eh?" at the end of one sentence.

Leonard is having doubts about getting into medical school, so he might try engineering. At the same time he and a friend are inventing a new diving unit. 

I do not see a movie from the 1940s for Man and Superman. In the mid 1940s the George Bernard Shaw's 1947 comedy "Man and Superman" was playing on Broadway and may have made it west to California. Or Pat is talking about the 1946 BBC broadcast of the play by radio.

I am uncertain which Flavell Pat is talking about: Arnold and Leonard knew both Ed Flavell and Kenny Flavell.

The return address for Pat is 3056 Shasta Circle North, Los Angeles.

next post  March 21, 1949 

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first post in Arnold's Story  July 1943

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Arnold's Story: September 1, 1948

September 1 brings another premium notice from the Veterans Administration National Service Life Insurance and a letter from father to son. Bill plans to take the Streamliner luxury service from Los Angeles to Chicago for a convention and then onto New York to check up on the Ideal System Company's East Coast office, but he asks Arnold to drop in for an unplanned visit to see how things really are. 

next post  September 23, 1948

previous post  August 31, 1948

first post in Arnold's Story  July 1943

first post in blog  Leonard's Story: May 29, 1943

Arnold's Story: January 21, 1948

Mrs. Harry Sloane Coffin might have been the wife of Henry Sloane Coffin, a prominent Presbyterian minister, president of the Union Theological Seminary, and Moderator of the Presbyterian Church in the United States of America (there were at least two Presbyterian churches in the U.S. at that time due to a split during the U.S. Civil War, but they merged in 1980s). If so, she would have been Dorothy Eells. 

next post  January 27, 1948

previous post  January 12, 1948

first post in Arnold's Story  July 1943

first post in blog  Leonard's Story: May 29, 1943

Arnold's Story: November 25, 1947

Arnold's sister-in-law Pat writes him, canceling their Thanksgiving plans. They now hope to be in they new apartment in Madison, New Jersey, by December and have invited Arnold down to spend Christmas with them.  

next post  November 28, 1947

previous post  November 24, 1947 MHN

first post in Arnold's Story  July 1943

first post in blog  Leonard's Story: May 29, 1943

Arnold's Story: December 14, 1944

Hazel writes again with family and neighborhood news. I am not sure who Dolly's Johnny is. She gets married during the war, but to a guys named Lee, not Johnny. The Apostle mentioned in the post script may be a 1943 work by  Sholem Asch.

next post  December 15, 1944

previous post  December 9, 1944

first post in Arnold's Story  July 1943

first post in blog  Leonard's Story: May 29, 1943

Arnold's Story: December 9, 1944

Hazel writes from Glendale, California, with family and neighborhood news.

next post  December 14, 1944

previous post  December 3, 1944

first post in Arnold's Story  July 1943

first post in blog  Leonard's Story: May 29, 1943

Arnold's Story: August 30, 1944

Hazel reports that merchants are anticipating the surrender of Germany soon, but it does not come until May 1945. In this letter Hazel enclosed a newspaper article about a brush fire near their home in Glendale, about a block uphill. Their property on Mountain Street stretched from Cavanaugh Road to North Jackson street, with the house on the Cavanaugh side and a large patio and fruit orchard on the Jackson side. (In the mid 1960's Bill Nevis divided the large lot in two, built another house on the Jackson side and sold it. They sold the original East Mountain Street house a few years before 1968 and moved to Whittier to be closer to Leonard and his family.)

next post  September 7, 1944

previous post  August 24, 1944 MHN

first post in Arnold's Story  July 1943

first post in blog  Leonard's Story: May 29, 1943

Arnold's Story: July 9, 1944

Long Distance phone calls were quite expensive in the 1940s and remained so for decades, so letters were the more common means of communication. Hazel crossed off the street address of the letterhead, so I guess she is using some old stationery from before they moved to Mountain Street. 

Arnold finished his Army Air Forces communications training at Yale University, got commissioned as an officer, and headed to the Massachusetts Institute of Technology for more instruction. At the time, the Army was obsessed with intelligence testing and Arnold was a very good test taker apparently. 

next post  July 12, 1944

previous post  June 28, 1944

first post in Arnold's Story  July 1943

first post in blog  Leonard's Story: May 29, 1943

 

Arnold's Story: May 26, 1944

Hazel Nevis writes on May 26 with news from the neighborhood families. Arnold Nevis also graduated from Herbert Hoover High School in Glendale, so presumably he and "Johnny" Eggleston were classmates or else they knew each other from the neighborhood.

John E. Eggleston, Glendale News-Press

next post  June 18, 1944

previous post  May 24, 1944

first post in Arnold's Story  July 1943

first post in blog  Leonard's Story: May 29, 1943

Arnold's Story: April 27, 1944

Hazel Nevis writes to her son Arnold with local and family news from Glendale:

next post  April 28, 1944

previous post  April 20, 1944

first post in Arnold's Story  July 1943

first post in blog  Leonard's Story: May 29, 1943