Our Wedding Day and WW II

I remember that eventful hot day July 24, 1941 when Helen, my pretty young bride to be, who was not as nervous as me, along with mother, went to Huntsville, Alabama in our old sick 1936 Chevy, where I was first subjected to a blood test to detect venereal disease, girls didn't have such things back then, you know. Then we went to the courthouse, into Judge Jones' chambers and were duly married. After wrestling with our sick Chevy to Huntsville and back, having just been given a lovely new bride, I too, like the old car was sick from simple nervous exhaustion. "Indeed a day to remember."

When we married, we had every reason in the world not to marry and only one to marry, that one was "we loved each other," that cancelled out all the others. When we married, I had no job, World War II was going in earnest. The draft was on the way. People everywhere were going to the big cities hiring in to the defense plants. Dad had gone north, working his way up through Kentucky and Indiana towards Chicago.

Much talk on the radio (no TV then you know) about us getting into the war, storm clouds rolling in, much to worry about, unsettling times but we were so young and in love that we had no thought of not succeeding. Just wanted to be together. History repeats itself every generation.

I graduated from Nashville Aircraft School in the fall of 1940 as an Aircraft Sheet Metal Mechanic, schooled in reading blueprints, making templates, forming metals, riveting, etc. The aircraft plants were all on the west coast except Vultee in Nashville and they were not hiring, so what to do. Well, they were building Camp Forrest at Tullahoma. Some from Lincoln were working as laborers. Dad and I checked in at the employment office. I applied as sheet metal mechanic, dad as carpenter. We were hired and worked that hard cold winter helping to build Camp Forrest. It was the coldest, wettest, muddiest place on earth. We went back and forth each day from Lincoln, Fayetteville, Mulberry, Lynchburg, on by where Motlow College now stands, on to Tullahoma. A snowy cold, icy winter but the pay was good. The job cut some of my mid-week visits to see my sweetheart Helen. By the time we got home at night, it was 8 o'clock and had to hit the road at 6am. The jobs were completed in the spring of 41. Dad decided the place to go was north towards Chicago to sample the employment situation and report back.

It began to look like I had no chance at a decent job in Lincoln County and I needed a job in defense to get a deferment when I registered for the draft. We wanted to get married and I had no desire to be drafted as a foot soldier, if we should get into the war as it appeared we would. So we began to make tentative plans to marry when we got a report on the job situation from dad, our scout in Chicago.

1940 - Just before Tim and Helen were married.

Dad arrived in Chicago July 16, 1941, eight days before we married. He had worked his way up through Kentucky and Indiana doing odd jobs to pay his way. He had never been north of the Mason-Dixon Line. He had heard from others that the best way to get a job in Chicago was to go to an employment office. Dad paid O'Shea Employment Agency $10.00 for a $60.00 a month job at St. Luke's Hospital working in the kitchen. Meals free. He found by reading the want-ads in the Tribune that work was available on all fronts, not always what you would have liked, but it paid better than no job at all back home.