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Radio: One Woman's Family in War and Pieces

This eyewitness account of World War II social history, women's progress and the Golden Years of Radio are woven into one woman's humorous and poignant autobiography of her family struggles and her attempts to fulfill her creative dreams.This book is richly illustrated with 50 historical photographs and sketches.

“When Ben went off to war...It was obvious I had to go to work. But with all these new duties and two small children under my wing, what could I do? There was a labor shortage. Sure. But was it so bad that some desperate employer would pay handsomely for two hours of a frazzled female’s time after a hard day? At say, fifty dollars a week?”.

PRAISE FOR ALICE AND PETER GREEN’S WORLD WAR II BIOGRAPHICAL MEMOIR
"This is a wonderful gift book. Alice Green’s writing is fresh and at times laugh-aloud funny, parts of it reminiscent of Cheaper by the Dozen. Thornton Wilder instructed Alice in creative writing. I recommend this book to all readers who enjoy a good laugh. The section “We Bought a Crooked House” was hilarious." --Paula B., online reviewer.

World War II was a tipping point for social change in America. With their men at war, nineteen million women joined the work force. Radio, the first instantaneous mass medium, provided daytime serial drama, entertainment and news, including pronouncements of world leaders and terrifying war reports, as President Roosevelt used the new medium to rally the nation to arms and win the war.

Alice Green’s lost and recently found eyewitness accounts of her childhood, her own war, the Golden Years of Radio and the postwar housing shortage are told from the light-hearted viewpoint of a shy, youngest child, who learns she can make even the stormy and outrageous characters in her own family laugh. With a little help from her son, who (just barely) lived to finish it, her story stands for unsung American women in war and survives as Alice’s triumph.

"1125097268"
Radio: One Woman's Family in War and Pieces

This eyewitness account of World War II social history, women's progress and the Golden Years of Radio are woven into one woman's humorous and poignant autobiography of her family struggles and her attempts to fulfill her creative dreams.This book is richly illustrated with 50 historical photographs and sketches.

“When Ben went off to war...It was obvious I had to go to work. But with all these new duties and two small children under my wing, what could I do? There was a labor shortage. Sure. But was it so bad that some desperate employer would pay handsomely for two hours of a frazzled female’s time after a hard day? At say, fifty dollars a week?”.

PRAISE FOR ALICE AND PETER GREEN’S WORLD WAR II BIOGRAPHICAL MEMOIR
"This is a wonderful gift book. Alice Green’s writing is fresh and at times laugh-aloud funny, parts of it reminiscent of Cheaper by the Dozen. Thornton Wilder instructed Alice in creative writing. I recommend this book to all readers who enjoy a good laugh. The section “We Bought a Crooked House” was hilarious." --Paula B., online reviewer.

World War II was a tipping point for social change in America. With their men at war, nineteen million women joined the work force. Radio, the first instantaneous mass medium, provided daytime serial drama, entertainment and news, including pronouncements of world leaders and terrifying war reports, as President Roosevelt used the new medium to rally the nation to arms and win the war.

Alice Green’s lost and recently found eyewitness accounts of her childhood, her own war, the Golden Years of Radio and the postwar housing shortage are told from the light-hearted viewpoint of a shy, youngest child, who learns she can make even the stormy and outrageous characters in her own family laugh. With a little help from her son, who (just barely) lived to finish it, her story stands for unsung American women in war and survives as Alice’s triumph.

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Radio: One Woman's Family in War and Pieces

Radio: One Woman's Family in War and Pieces

Radio: One Woman's Family in War and Pieces
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Radio: One Woman's Family in War and Pieces

Radio: One Woman's Family in War and Pieces

Overview

This eyewitness account of World War II social history, women's progress and the Golden Years of Radio are woven into one woman's humorous and poignant autobiography of her family struggles and her attempts to fulfill her creative dreams.This book is richly illustrated with 50 historical photographs and sketches.

“When Ben went off to war...It was obvious I had to go to work. But with all these new duties and two small children under my wing, what could I do? There was a labor shortage. Sure. But was it so bad that some desperate employer would pay handsomely for two hours of a frazzled female’s time after a hard day? At say, fifty dollars a week?”.

PRAISE FOR ALICE AND PETER GREEN’S WORLD WAR II BIOGRAPHICAL MEMOIR
"This is a wonderful gift book. Alice Green’s writing is fresh and at times laugh-aloud funny, parts of it reminiscent of Cheaper by the Dozen. Thornton Wilder instructed Alice in creative writing. I recommend this book to all readers who enjoy a good laugh. The section “We Bought a Crooked House” was hilarious." --Paula B., online reviewer.

World War II was a tipping point for social change in America. With their men at war, nineteen million women joined the work force. Radio, the first instantaneous mass medium, provided daytime serial drama, entertainment and news, including pronouncements of world leaders and terrifying war reports, as President Roosevelt used the new medium to rally the nation to arms and win the war.

Alice Green’s lost and recently found eyewitness accounts of her childhood, her own war, the Golden Years of Radio and the postwar housing shortage are told from the light-hearted viewpoint of a shy, youngest child, who learns she can make even the stormy and outrageous characters in her own family laugh. With a little help from her son, who (just barely) lived to finish it, her story stands for unsung American women in war and survives as Alice’s triumph.

Product Details

BN ID: 2940155111375
Publisher: Greenskills Press d/b/a/ Greenskills Associates LLC
Publication date: 12/31/2017
Sold by: Smashwords
Format: eBook
File size: 4 MB

About the Author

Alice Herlihy Green, author and my mother, lived from 1913 to 1982. If you read this book, you will know know her biography, as true to life as we could make it. However there are many more subtle details outside the narrative stream of this story worth knowing about her. Beside her reputation as the free spirit in our extended family, an Auntie Mame character, which this book should make evident, she had many domestic talents. This vocation began with the recipe for her mother's tasty apple pie. She took great pride in cooking special dishes for her family, personally preparing food for large par-ties. For Dad she perfected a Hungarian goulash—round steak cooked in a rich, red paprika sauce and served over flat noodles: I have never found an equal. Other specialties included beef, green pepper and toma-to, prime rib roast with popovers made in the drippings, fish chowder, split pea soup with ham and a superior pork sausage turkey stuffing.

During World War II she learned to “can” fruits and vegetables, not in cans but in dozens of Mason jars: fresh peaches, pears, whole tomatoes, blanched and skinned in soup kettles, recapturing the flavors of the har-vest on a chill winter night. She mastered her Singer sewing machine's many moods and quirks and could recreate the fashions she saw in a film, make the pattern and sew up a beautiful dress for her next party. She was fond of copying Debbie Reynolds’s cutest styles and re-creating them in special prom dresses for my sister Linda She also knitted us all Irish fisherman’s sweaters of white boiled and oiled yarn, featuring a central panel with the rare and difficult blackberry stitch.

Clearly, she was accomplished in all the home arts and crafts, like so many other American women in the mid-twentieth century. And yet, she rose above these talents and created something uniquely her own.


In his career as an architect, Peter Green has seen enough close calls, suspicious acts and outright skullduggery to lure him into writing mysteries. In Peter’s curiously autobiographical debut novel, Crimes of Design, architect Patrick MacKenna, discovers the body of the staunchest advocate for his controversial flood-protected dream project in the site’s storm water pumping station during a record flood in St. Louis. He is forced to become an amateur sleuth to save his career, his family and his very life.

A writer, architect and city planner reared in a family of journalists, Peter found his father’s 400 World War II letters, his humorous war stories, his mother’s writings and his family’s often hilarious doings too good a tale to keep to himself, so he launched a second career as a writer. After years of architectural work and proposal writing for his design firms, he went back to Washington University to study creative writing with such accomplished authors as Catherine Rankovic, Robert Earleywine and Rick Skwiot, resulting in the release in 2005 of his biographical memoir on the often hilarious antics and serious achievements of his dad’s World War II adventure, Ben''s War with the U. S. Marines (2005, 2014) and his mother's humorous biographical memoir, Radio: One Woman's Family in War and Pieces.

Peter earned a Certificate in Creative Writing and Bachelor of Architecture degree from Washington University, St. Louis, and a B.A. from Yale University. He is Vice President, Programs, for St. Louis Writers Guild, a member of Sisters in Crime, St. Louis Publishers Association and Missouri Writers Guild. Among design organizations, he is a member of the American Institute of Architects, American Planning Association, American Institute of Certified Planners and past St. Louis Post President and Fellow of the Society of American Military Engineers. He lives in St. Louis with his wife, Connie, and has two very young married daughters and three small grandchildren. The life and times of the last pet he owned. “The Night We Ruined the Dog,” can be found on his website, www.peterhgreen.com .

Table of Contents

Radio: One Woman's Family in War and Pieces i
1: A Fish Story-the One that Got Away 1
BOOK I, 1913-1935: WHY IS ALICE'S HAIR ALWAYS HANGING IN HER EYES? 5
2: Mama 6
3: I Was a Volunteer? 12
4: Papa 15
5: A Member of the Family 27
6: More about Papa 37
7: Commencement, of Everything Else 47
8: A Family of Gypsies 52
9: The University and Thornton Wilder 61
BOOK II, 1936-1943: RADIO DAYS 71
10: Tennis Court Challenge 72
11: Assault on the Ivory Tower 78
12: Ben Looks Back for the Last Time 85
13: Reining in a Migratory Instinct 91
14: Launching My Publicity Career 95
15: Ben Joins the Golden Age of Radio 102
16: Ben Gains Creative Control 108
BOOK III, 1944-1945: A FAMILY GOES TO WAR 117
17: Off to War, with the Corps 118
18: A Radio Family 123
19: Between Us Girls 131
20: Furloughed Fears 142
21: Women Defend the Homefront 151
22: Ben's War with the U. S. Marines 162
23: Wolves and Bears 165
24: Annisquam Summer 173
25: Radio and War 182
26: The Storm Blows Ashore 191

BOOK IV, 1946-1950: WE BOUGHT A CROOKED HOUSE 196
27: Our Quest for Shelter 197
28: Leveling the House 202
29: The Boss Takes Over 208
30: In Charge of the Funhouse 213
31: The Ways of the Workplace 217
32: "Our House is Haunted!" 223
33: Neighborly Advice 229
34: Linda Handles the Big Boss 236
35. Life with Fathers-Part One 241
BOOK V, 1951-1982: METAMORPHOSIS 246
36: Life with Fathers-Part Two 247
37: Happy Days 252
38: From Unhealthy Obsession ... 257
39: ...to a New Profession 261
40: A Tale of Two Cities-The Letter 272
41: We Built a Creamy House 281
42: Ben's War Is Over 287
43: Parting Thoughts 292
Acknowledgments 297
About the Author 298

 

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