My father always seemed to have interesting hobbies going and one of them was being a short wave operator. My brother, mother and I, often went to sleep at night with his ham radio going at all hours. This particular evening, he came into our bedroom about 3:30 and told us to put our robes on and come out into the kitchen. In spite of our whimpers and protestations, we went into the kitchen. My mother was already there, and looking as crabby and sleepy as we did. “Listen to this” he said. We sat down and started listening to the radio. A man’s voice was on and he was screaming on top of his voice at everybody in a foreign language. Every once in a while a crowd of voices all screamed back in a chorus. He turned off the radio, and told us that, that was Adolph Hitler from Germany and pretty soon the whole world would be at war. It wasn’t too long after that his prophecies were correct.
The war engulfed our lives, and everything changed. We were living in Rhode Island and stuck out into the Atlantic Coast. We were all organized in our neighborhood and our house was a hub for war-time activities. Our father always had 7 to 10 young men for the purpose of pre-training for the Signal Corps. He helped them study for their ham licenses. Everyone of them passed This was strictly voluntary with no pay. He taught them morse code and all the laws in the C.D. Manual. Everyone of them went in to the Signal Corps. And they all came home except one. My brother sent me a photograph of him years later.
A typical young American boy.My father taught me morse code. I was eleven years old at the time. A boy who I didn’t know very well lived across the street from us. He also knew morse code and we soon started flashing code back and forth with our flashlights at night. We thought it was fun, but the neighbors became hysterical and reported us to the police. All we sent was complete nonsense, but they thought it was secret code from the “enemies’. My father gently told me that I would have to stop and that abruptly ended my career as a secret spy. I returned to knitting for the Red Cross. My major contribution for the War Effort.