(H)our History Lesson: Children’s Home Front Volunteerism and Service in Paterson, New Jersey, WW II Heritage City

Image 1: Children participate in a scrap drive in Paterson in 1942.

Credit: Paterson Museum

About this Lesson

This lesson is part of a series teaching about the World War II home front, with Paterson, New Jersey designated as an American World War II Heritage City. The lesson contains readings and photos to contribute to learners’ understandings about how youth volunteered and contributed to home front war efforts. This included participation in the Junior Red Cross, collecting and making items for soldiers or humanitarian efforts, supporting material drives, and helping raise money in campaigns, such as for the United Jewish Appeal.

Objectives:

1. Describe the purpose and examples of youth contributions to war and humanitarian efforts

2. Explain how youth volunteerism and work helped meet needs, both on the home front and abroad

3. Compare local, historical perspectives on service to synthesize and connect to larger wartime perspectives and themes.

Materials for Students:

1. Readings 1, 2, 3

2. Recommended: Map of Paterson, New Jersey

3. Images --All images are availabe in the gallery for the Paterson, NJ Series

Paterson, NJ: World War II Her...

17 Images

This album accompanies Paterson, NJ: A World War II Heritage City Lesson Collection. They are part of Teaching with Historic Places.

Teacher Tip: The images in the Patterson Gallery are labeled with the name of this lesson ("Children's Volunteerism") and the image number in the title. The high quality images in the gallery might be better for your classroom slides or for students to do close analysis.

Getting Started: Essential Question

How did youth in Paterson contribute to the war efforts on the home front?

Read to Connect

Reading 1: Newspaper on Junior Red Cross Enrollment

Junior Red Cross Enrollment Opens In City’s Schools 

The Morning Call, November 3, 1944, p.1 

One hundred percent American Junior Red Cross membership in the public, parochial, and private schools of Paterson is the goal set for the November 1-15 enrollment for the Service Campaign, it was announced by Mrs. Gordon L. Corbett, chairman of the Junior Red Cross Paterson Chapter. Nationally, the Junior Red Cross has more than 18,000,000 members, about seventy percent of the school population, making it the nation’s largest youth organization. 

Mrs. Corbett pointed out that the Junior Red Cross is making a significant wartime contribution. She said that the members here in Paterson have contributed a great number of utility bags, slip covers for lap boards, convalescent slippers, soft toys, kits containing tooth paste, shaving cream, etc., and decorated menus used by the Navy all over the world. 

The pupils are still very busy and hard at work turning out many things for our veteran hospitals, to be used by our boys wounded overseas and now in our many hospitals, she said. 

It was reported that medical kits, valued at $87,500, are being purchased by the American Junior Red Cross National Children’s Fund for immediate shipment to schools in Yugoslavia, Greece, Belgium, and other countries. Our Paterson schools have taken a very active part in the great work.  

These kits are sent to liberated and occupied countries through the joint commission of the International Red Cross in Geneva. Each medical kit, large enough to serve four hundred children, will contain approximately thirty items, such as aspirin, boric acid, scissors, soap, and gauze. Only institutions able to control these articles will receive them.  

Plans have already been completed for Junior members to pack gift boxes in their classrooms, containing some 10,000 needed educational supplies for European children.  

Junior Red Cross posters about the enrollment campaign are now in every schoolroom in Paterson and the surrounding area to remind the pupils to keep up their good work and make our schools one hundred per cent Junior Red Cross.  

The next two weeks, Nov. 1 to 15 is the time of the annual enrollment, when Junior Red Cross recruits will join the ranks of the old timers in winning the war.  

Enrollment in Junior Red Cross is urged now! Nov. 1-15. 

Reading 2: Newspaper Articles on Organized Youth Service

Reading A 

Background for students: The scrap and salvage drives in Paterson as described were organized by air raid zones. Air raid zones were established to organize civilian protection against enemy threats. These zones conducted practices, distributed information, such as on blackouts, and had civilian volunteers. 

State Official Praises Paterson For Scrap Plan 

The Morning Call, October 9, 1942 

Paterson’s method of conducting its salvage drive was commended yesterday by Clinton M. White, executive secretary of the New Jersey Salvage Committee. He expressed great interest in the Junior Commandos organizations at work here. 

‘The report you gave me on the method of scrap collection in Paterson and the amount of materials you are collecting is extremely interesting to me.’ Mr. White wrote Miss Sadye Fidler, chairman of the local committee. ‘I wish to commend you and the other members of your committee and all volunteers who have helped in this very important war effort.’  

Paterson is conducting its drive in the various air raid zones and sectors, covering small areas on each weekend rather than launching one great, city-wide drive. The committee felt that it could raise more scrap per capita, albeit less spectacularly in this manner. It points to the 100,000 pounds raised in an area of 20 blocks by air raid wardens and commandos in one zone to sustain its contention. 

‘I was particularly interested in your having organized school children of Paterson into Junior Commando units. The use of school children in our salvage drive has proven beyond a doubt the patriotism of our young folk and their eagerness to get in the scrap to aid us in winning the war,’ Mr. White added.  

‘Keep up the good work.’ 

Reading B 

Background for students: The United Jewish Appeal (UJA) was founded in 1939 and raised funds to assist Jewish refugees in Europe and the United States. A large Jewish population was involved in fundraising and contributions to the war effort in Paterson. The Paterson Morning Call newspaper had a section in the newspaper that highlighted local Jewish religious activities and organizations. 

Jewish Youth to Work for U.J.A. Campaign 

The Morning Call, May 5, 1944 

Recognizing the challenge facing the Paterson Jewish community to raise an unprecedented quota for national and overseas needs for relief, rescue and rehabilitation and for two scores of religious, cultural, civic-protective health and welfare agencies, the Jewish youth of Paterson is being mobilized for the forthcoming United Jewish Appeal of Paterson.  . . . 

Addressing the youth groups, both Mr. Bornstein and Mr. Wollruch stated that the Jewish youth is aware of the plight of their young brethren in Nazi Europe ‘those who remain alive,’ they said turn to American Jewry for help from their horrible miseries. Jewish boys and girls who have found a haven will learn to live again through funds raised by the United Jewish Appeal.  

It is the duty of every youth in Paterson to enroll as a soldier in this army of rescue. Jewish youth throughout the country is contributing its share toward the United Jewish Appeal. Jewish youth of Paterson participated successfully in the last year’s campaign. It will have to double its efforts to meet the multiple demands of this year. 

Reading 3: Oral History

Excerpt from interview of Dolores Davidson Most 

Background: Dolores Davidson Most (b. 1929) was one of Paterson’s first female police officers. She grew up in Paterson during World War II. The following is a selected excerpt of the interview that is focused on growing up during the war in Paterson, documented by Paterson Great Falls National Historical Park. Minor edits have been made to the excerpt for readability.  

Most: And then with the outbreak of World War II, he (father) went to work for Wright’s as a polisher. And I do remember that when he went to work at Wright’s, the pay was a lot better, the food on our table, like fruit, was there that weren’t there all the time. But then after World War II, then he went back to the railroad again. . . 

Interviewer: What got you into police work? 

Most: All my life I've been involved in the neighborhood and cities. When I was in School 15, during World War II, I worked at the Red Cross down on Market Street. I brought work home. My mother and I sewed baby booties. And we knitted and I would go down to the Red Cross building. It was up on the second floor. A coffee shop, I can't think of the name of it now, but I would go there after school and work two or three days a week.  

And then in the seventh grade and eighth grade, there was a police officer, Mr. Keypers, he was a patrolman, he started Junior Commando Group at School 15. I was captain of the girls, and Joe Esposito was captain of the boys, and once a month, they'd put it in the paper that we would go out and collect scrap paper and the people would put it on their curb. And then another Saturday he would get a truck load to him; another Saturday we'd collect scrap iron. We'd even go into basements and pull out bed springs and then with the monies that he made for selling the scrap iron and the paper he would buy war stamps.  

Each kid that was part of this group got the book. You put in your stamps, and when you had $18.75, you got a war bond. I never did get a war bond that I can remember. But what I do remember is that there on McBride Avenue, he would take us to Libby's. They used to open up this board and they had stools there, and we could have a hot dog and a chocolate milk, which was a big deal. 

Interviewer: Did you have a victory garden? 

Most: That was my dad. He grew so many tomatoes, he got, you know, he was giving them out to the neighbors. But he got a rash eating so many tomatoes. They put the earth ware there, it was like black, it was very fertile. 

. . . . For a very short time, I worked on a farm. I'd go downtown and they would pick us up by the City Hall with a flatbed truck, took us to a farm . . . The first day I bunched kohlrabi (type of turnip cabbage), I didn't know what a kohlrabi was. I had slacks or jeans on, and then the cords underneath my belt, and I came home and my back of my neck was as red as a beet. I got sunburnt. And I remember he let us go sit under a tree to eat our lunch, but we could only have water. He had a cow there and he had milk, but he could only give us water. I remember that. . . .I lasted there maybe a week. My mother said, no way, because I was sick. I was throwing up, so that was end of my farmerette business, really.  

My dad was an air raid warden, you know. I remember him going out with the hat and the whistle, hollering at people to pull their shades down. You sat around the radio and listened to the shows, Lux Theatre, with Loretta Young announcing, or when they had the Academy Awards, and they would describe the women's gowns and you'd sit there. They were good times, they were good times, really. 

Quotations to consider:

“The Paterson Victory Garden Committee today urged the citizenry to concentrate on backyard gardens as their contribution to the war effort. . . . Emphasis has been placed on the necessity for a Victory Garden by everyone, even if it includes but a few tomato plants.”

-Concentrate on Your Back Yard for a Victory Garden, The Paterson Evening News, March 24, 1943

“Jewish organizations were urged to give wholehearted and full participation to the Red Cross drive . . . Support to the Red Cross drive was pledged at the recent executive committee meeting of the council. The representative organizations are confident the Jewish residents of Paterson will do their share.”

- Jewish Council to Aid Red Cross, The Patterson Evening News, March 3, 1943

Image 2: American Junior Red Cross Enrolling for Service” by A.M. Upjohn.

Credit: Bangor Public Library

Student Activities

Questions for Reading 1 & Image 2

1. The picture of the Junior Red Cross Enrollment poster is not specific to Paterson but is an example of a poster type that may have been found in this type of enrollment campaign. How do you think the poster was designed to appeal to children?

2. Why does Mrs. Corbett think the Junior Red Cross work in Paterson is significant during wartime?

3. What kinds of things did Junior Red Cross members in Paterson make to provide to schools and injured soldiers overseas?

Questions for Reading 2A:

1. How did material drives like the one in the article contribute to the war effort?

2. What was different about Paterson’s approach to conducting a salvage drive?

3. How did Mr. White's praise for the school children in Junior Commando units reflect the importance of youth participation in wartime activities?

Questions for Reading 2B:

1. What was the purpose of the United Jewish Appeal?

2. How did the local Paterson Jewish community contribute to the United Jewish Appeal?

3. Why do you think mobilizing local Jewish youth was important to the success of their campaign?

Questions for Reading 3

1. How did Dolores Davidson Most volunteer to war efforts as a child?

2. How does Most’s description of her time as a Junior Commando connect to Reading 2?

3. What are two ways her father contributed to home front war efforts outside of his workplace?

4. How does Most’s interview show examples of how local families and communities adjusted during the war?

Lesson Closing:

• How did youth in Paterson contribute to the war efforts on the home front?

• Why did adult organizations work to support and mobilize youth home front efforts?

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This lesson was written by Sarah Nestor Lane, an educator and consultant with the Cultural Resources Office of Interpretation and Education, funded by the National Council on Public History's cooperative agreement with the National Park Service.

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