Local writer Sarah St. John pulls from the Journal-World archives to compile reports of what it was like to be in Lawrence decades ago.
According to T. J. Sweeney, chair of the gifts committee, the Lawrence soldiers at Camp Doniphan were reported to have enjoyed a good holiday celebration with the help of the arrival of the special railroad car packed with treats from home. Major Henry T. Salisbury, formerly in command of the ...
During the course of the war, there were of course several front-page stories every day relating battles and other news from the front. One interesting side effect of this emphasis on war news was the permeation of ordinary hometown news with “war jargon.” A fine example of this tendency ...
As U.S. soldiers approached their first “Great War” Christmas, a joint effort by the federal government and local citizens was created to bring a holiday feast to the approximately 620 Lawrence men training at Fort Sill. According to a late-November Lawrence Journal-World article, “Uncle ...
Sam Pickard, son of C. C. Pickard of Lawrence, wrote home this month while training in the Royal Flying Corps of Toronto, Canada. During a practice flight one evening, Pickard had “found something wrong with his machine so that he could not read the instruments before him to tell his ...
The Service Flag, whose stars were used to indicate family members who were serving in the armed forces, became widespread in the Second World War, but its origins date from 1917, when the first such flag was designed and patented. The new practice quickly caught on. “The first of the service ...
Food-conservation efforts continued in Lawrence throughout the fall, as volunteers canvassed the town asking citizens, especially housewives and cooks, to sign a pledge card promising their best efforts in waste-free cooking. According to the Lawrence Journal-World in November 1917, Chancellor ...