Hallowe’en in 1924

by Erin Doane, Senior Curator

If you lived in Elmira 100 years ago, on October 31 you would not see children in costumes trick-or-treating. Going house-to-house collecting candy and other goodies on Halloween just wasn’t a thing yet. Archivist Rachel Dworkin wrote a great blogpost last year about the history of trick-or-treat. Click here to read it. 

You may still hear your doorbell on Hallowe’en night in 1924. When you go to answer it, however, no one’s there. Ha! You’ve become a victim of a classic prank. It was common for youngsters to sneak around on the night of Hallowe’en engaging in mischief that ranged from the innocent door knock-and-run to malicious acts of theft and vandalism. On October 29, 1924, the Star-Gazette ran an article from Washington D.C. describing the city’s regulations for a safe and sane Hallowe’en. Throwing bricks and using flour for confetti were strictly prohibited and people could not wear masks on the street. Horn tooting and standard confetti tossing was permitted, however, if gently done. Pictures of chorus girls should not under any circumstances be posted on church doors, nor undertakers’ signs on doctors’ doors.

Police and residents here were also worried that mischief may get out of hand on Hallowe’en. In Elmira Heights, special police did extra patrols October 27-31 to keep pranksters in check. Another potential solution was to provide kids with so many activities around the holiday that they didn’t have the energy or inclination to get into trouble. Both the Elmira Free Academy and Southside High School hosted parties. Grace Church, First Baptist Church, Westside M.E. Church, the King’s Daughters Class of Oakwood Avenue M.E. Church, the Christian Endeavor Society of the Baptist Church, the Young People’s Fellowship of Trinity Church, the Christian Endeavor Society of the Baptist Church in Horseheads, and the First Church of Christ, Disciples all entertained young people and their families at Hallowe’en parties, dances, and masquerades in 1924.  

The Neighborhood House hosted two Hallowe’en parties – one on October 30 for boys and one on October 31 for girls. Nearly 300 boys attended the festivities. In order to get into the party, they had to pass through a “Chamber of Horrors” filled with ghosts, goblins, electrified stair railings, and jangling chains and tin pans. The awesome sounds, sights, and sensations reportedly sent thrills down their spines. Once inside the gymnasium, they enjoyed games, various races including sack, crab, wheelbarrow, water pan, candle, and shoe races, and pie and doughnut eating contests. The best costumes won prizes and each boy got apples to take home.

The Neighborhood House, c. 1925

The Southside Athletic Association, the Westside Community Association, and the North Main Street Better Business Club also hosted large neighborhood Hallowe’en celebrations specifically to keep youngsters from getting up to mischief such as ringing all the doorbells in town or heaving ancient cabbages on clean front porches. All three parties were free and open to the public.

The Southside Athletic Association’s Hallowe’en carnival took place on October 30 at the playground at Miller and Keefe Streets. The entire playground was lit up with red flame lights. More than 3,000 people enjoyed games, refreshments, and a big bonfire. The highlight of the evening was the greased pig chase. When the slicked-up animal was released, pandemonium broke loose. The Star-Gazette reported the next day that the porker was finally caught by John R. Mack. But then two weeks later, it published an article claiming that Johnnie Sweeney had caught the greased pig but then had it stolen from him. An unnamed man told the boy he was a member of the organizing committee, took the animal from him, and then ran off with it. The Southside Athletic Club promised to buy little Johnnie another pig.

The Westside Community Association celebration took place on October 31 at the playground on Hoffman Street. Festivities began with a parade of about 200 costumed children with prizes awarded from most comical costumes. The 1,000 attendees snacked on popcorn and apples, played games, enjoyed musical entertainment, and danced around a large bonfire.

Star-Gazette, October 22, 1924

The North Main Street Better Business Club hosted a large, well-advertised Mardi Gras Hallowe’en carnival on October 31 as well. North Main Street was closed from West Clinton to West Fourth Streets for the event. The party began with a parade of men, women, and children dressed up as ghosts, clowns, gnomes, elves, bandits, angels, male and female impersonators, and other characters. Local businesses and residents donated hundreds of dollars’ worth of prizes for those in the best costumes including toys, musical instruments, silk hose, flowers, candy, perfume, various hats, sacks of flour, a large ham, and cold, hard cash. After the parade, several thousand people enjoyed music played by the Elmira College orchestra and the Italian band, and entertainment from a troupe of performing donkeys. There were also refreshments and a large bonfire. 

Star-Gazette, November 1, 1924

The morning after Hallowe’en, the results were in: remarkably few instances of depredation or property damage were reported compared to previous years. The strategy of hosting a ton of parties to keep kids out of mischief was a success! Some of the tricks that were still pulled during the night included youngsters ringing the old ball at School No. 5, signs for “ice cream,” “boy wanted,” and “for rent” appearing on people’s homes, and windshields and windows being painted with soap. Police Chief Weaver admitted that harmless pranks were winked at by the police but his officers did go after more egregious offenders. A group of youths on Grove Street “jacked” up an automobile to see what would happen and were taken to police headquarters. They were given a warning and sent home. Another group used a ladder to let down four electric lamps suspended near Woodlawn Cemetery. The crime wasn’t discovered until a car got caught in the wires. No one was hurt but the perpetrators were still at large. There was also a large willow wicker chair awaiting its owner at police headquarters, the result of a not-particularly-clever Hallowe’en prank.

Have a Safe and Happy Hallowe’en!

 

Trick-or-Treat

 By Rachel Dworkin

As a kid, I loved trick-or-treating. Who doesn’t love costumes and free candy? Most Americans agree with me. In 2022, there were 40.9 million trick-or-treaters between the ages of 5 and 14. Americans spent $3.1 billion on candy for them. I know I certainly spent my share. The tradition loomed so large in my childhood, it’s hard to believe it’s barely 100 years old.

In Europe, people have been dressing up in costume and visiting homes for food around Halloween since at least the 15^th century. Despite the tradition being wide-spread across the British Isles, it wasn’t until the 1910s that it caught on in the Americas. Prior to that, Halloween, if it was celebrated at all, was marked by private parties, public dances, and petty acts of vandalism. The first record of costumed children going door-to-door in North America is from a newspaper account in Kingston, Ontario, Canada in 1910. It was described in a Boston suburb in 1919 and Chicago in 1920. The phrase “Trick-or-treat” also originates from Canada and appeared in the 1920s. The phrase wasn’t used in the United States until 1932 and wasn’t widespread until around 1940. The practice as a whole didn’t really catch on across the country until the 1950s. 

Halloween postcard, ca. 1910s

It’s hard to say when trick-or-treating came to Elmira and Chemung County. None of the diaries we have from the 1910s or 1920s mention it, nor do the newspapers. Halloween parties and dances were common, as was trouble-making. Throughout the 1930s, Police Officer James Hennessey describes combating roving Halloween gangs of teenage boys who smashed windows and set fires throughout the last weeks of October. In 1934, the Elmira Heights Police Department issued a warning in the newspaper promising to crack down on holiday mischief-makers. Hendy Avenue School began holding an annual costume party and bonfire to keep kids off the streets. 

Halloween postcard, ca. 1910s

The first mention of kids asking for treats in Elmira appears on October 28, 1939 when columnist Matt Richardson railed against kids these days saying:

  “The youth of today doesn’t wait until October 31, the eve of All Saints' Day or Halloween, to celebrate. It lays aside a week for it, but not with tick-tack, jack-o’-lantern, and purse-tied-to-a-string capers. Instead the boys of today walk right up to neighbors’ homes boldly, ringing the doorbell and inquire: “Have you got a hand-out for us?”

1942 was the first time I found the practice of trick-or-treating mentioned in a local diary, although not by name. Jennie L. Hall of Elmira, wrote “Had nineteen here for Halloween handouts. Glad to do it.” She wrote about it again in 1945, 1946, and 1947, mentioning children coming to her door and her own grandchildren going around to the neighbors.

It had certainly caught on here by 1948. That was the first year the phrase trick-or-treat appeared in an Elmira paper. It was also the first year Ira Heyward ever participated. In an oral history in 2013, he described his first Halloween in Elmira after moving here from rural South Carolina:

“I remember the Charrons who lived kitty-corner from us on Washington Street.  They took me one time, my very first year here, Halloween-ing and I had never done that before.  So, what happened was, I got back home and I had all this candy and stuff.  My mom thought I had robbed somebody or went down to Cary’s and ripped them off.  It was a little candy store about two blocks from our house where they sold penny candy.  And my mother was very upset about that because she thought I had stolen it.  But it wasn’t.  We had gone house to house, pretty much what the kids do today.  So, she took me across the street to Mrs. Charron and she explained to mom that no, we kids do this every year.  And the kids go out and collect candies and come back and eat it.”

Over time, Halloween trick-or-treating has changed. While fruits, nuts, and homemade cookies were once common treats, people these days prefer prepackaged candies. In the late 1960s, there were widespread reports of people inserting razors, pins, or drugs into homemade treats. In 1969, an unnamed Elmira woman reported finding one in a cookie. The newspapers advised parents to check over their children’s hauls. Mine certainly did when I was growing up. According to surveys, 88% of parents do. Since 1950, children have also been collecting money for the United Nations International Children’s Emergency Fund (UNICEF). What started as a one-time fundraiser in Bridesburg, Pennsylvania quickly became a movement. In 1953, trick-or-treaters from the Westminster Fellowship of Horseheads Presbyterian Church raise $77.75. By 1960, 3 million American kids across 11,000 communities raised $1.75 million.

Robot costume, 1966. Image courtesy of Elmira Star-Gazette.

The Elmira Heights Police Department first began setting trick-or-treating hours in 1962. The City of Elmira followed suit in 1971, although not without some push-back. This year, trick-or-treating is scheduled to run from 5-8pm in the Town of Catlin, 5:30-8pm to in the City of Elmira, and 6-8pm in the Village of Elmira Heights. Make sure to have plenty of candy ready to go.

 

Note: In the course of writing this blog, I realized that we don’t have any trick-or-treating photos. If you have some you’d like to share, please consider donating.

The Sisters of St. Joseph

by Rachel Dworkin, archivist

In spring 1907, Mother Agnes of the Order of the Sisters of St. Joseph of Rochester knelt in the chapel of the Nazareth Convent waiting for a sign from god. J. John Hassett and Dr. John A. Westlake of Elmira had approached Bishop McQuaid of Rochester about opening a Catholic hospital in Elmira in the old Academy of Our Lady of the Angels school. The Sisters of St. Joseph were selected to run it and Mother Agnes was praying for guidance on who to send when Sister Alice Rose Conway walked in. She would serve as St. Joseph’s Hospital administrator until her death in 1939.

Sister Alice Rose Conway

The Order of the Sisters of St. Joseph was founded in Le Puy, France in 1650. They established their American chapter in upstate New York in 1836 and have served the Diocese of Rochester, which includes Chemung County, since 1868. Prior to establishing St. Joseph’s Hospital, the sisters were strictly a teaching order. Sister Alice Rose was a French and math teacher at Nazareth Academy. Of the seven sisters who helped to establish the hospital, only two, Sister St. Ann and Sister Jerome, had any previous hospital experience. The former teachers had a lot of learning to do.

St. Joseph’s Hospital opened for patients on September 24, 1908 after extensive renovations. The first few years were incredibly hard and the hours were brutal. The sisters rose at 3am to do laundry in the kitchen before seeing to their nursing duties. At the end of their shifts, they ironed before dinner and then attended classes on nursing after. Money was tight. While the sisters made sure the patients had food, they, on several occasions, had nothing more than soup made from potato skins. Gas and electric service was spotty and wards were often lit by candles stuck in potatoes.

Original St. Joseph's Hospital and adjacent convent

The hospital grew rapidly under the guidance of Sister Alice Rose. Despite her limited experience, she was an able administrator and skilled fundraiser. In 1909, they held their first fundraiser, a baseball game between Elmira and Wilkes-Barre. The following year they built a laundry building and almost immediately launched into a campaign to fund construction of an annex. By the time Sister Alice Rose died in 1939, the hospital had expanded from a tiny converted school with 26 beds to a goodly-sized hospital complex with 5 buildings, 245 beds, and a dedicated nursing school with dormitory.

Care at St. Joseph’s had a uniquely Catholic flavor. The sisters believed it was crucial to heal patients both physically and spiritually. Patients could pray with the sisters, receive sacraments, and attend mass. At the tail end of the 20th century, they could even watch an in-house religious channel on their room’s TV. The nursing school was decidedly Catholic too. Each floor of the dormitory was overseen by a resident nun who kept the girls from sinful behaviors like dating. Students not only took classes on nursing and health, but also on the Catholic faith. Everyone, Catholic or not, was required to attend chapel at 6:50 am and Mass twice a week. It’s no surprise, really, that over the years, upwards of 40 students ended up as nuns themselves.

Sisters of St. Joseph on hospital steps, ca. 1930s

Sister Ruth Schicker, the last of the founding sisters, died at age 81 in 1967, but there where still plenty of nuns at St. Joseph’s Hospital. At the Order’s peak in 1947, there were 40 sisters working as nurses, administrators, and clerks. As the 20th century progressed, however, the number of nuns across the nation as a whole began to decline from a peak of 180,000 in 1965 to 92,107 in 1996. By the turn of the 21st century, there were only four sisters still working at St. Joseph’s Hospital. Sister Marie Castagnaro was the last, finally stepping down as administrator in 2010, shortly before St. Joseph’s merged with the Arnot Health System. 

An interesting side note: in 1942, the Sisters of St. Joseph of Rochester established a mission in Selma, Alabama and founded Good Samaritan Hospital for the treatment of impoverished blacks who could not be admitted to the local white hospital. Sisters from St. Joseph’s Hospital in Elmira and the mother house in Rochester took turns working there. On March 7, 1965, Civil Rights activists lead a march for voting rights which was supposed to be from Selma to Montgomery. Instead, the marchers were brutally beaten by state troopers and white supremacists at the foot of the Edmund Pettus Bridge. Four sisters from St. Joseph’s were working at Good Samaritan at the time and helped to care for the wounded from the march. Within six hours, the hospital treated over 100 patients and admitted 15. Martin Luther King later visited the hospital to thank the sisters personally. In 1989, Margaret Hanley, formerly Sister Michael Ann Hanley, gave an interview about her time in Selma. Thanks to a grant from the South Central Regional Library Council, we were able to digitize the interview and make it available on YouTube. A quick warning before watching: it’s an hour long, so maybe grab some popcorn first.

Thanksgiving Dinner: 1900-1950

by Erin Doane, Curator

By now, just three days before Thanksgiving, most people have already planned out their feast. But, if you are among those who are still looking for menu ideas, why not look back to the first half of the 1900s for inspiration? I was curious about how Thanksgiving dinners changed over the years, so I searched through the Elmira Star-Gazette from 1900 through 1950. It turns out that the menus are not all that different from what we eat on the holiday today. After all, a traditional dinner is traditional for a reason. Yet, it was interesting to see how the meals changed during hard times like the Great Depression and both World Wars.

Elaborate dinners have long been a Thanksgiving tradition.

Star-Gazette, November 11, 1908

There were a few dishes that were staples of Thanksgiving dinners over the full span of the 50 years. Nearly every single menu I found had turkey as its centerpiece, which was not a surprise at all. It was, however, sometimes replaced by other meats (particularly during the Great Depression). Almost all the menus also included pumpkin pie. Again, no surprise there. I was a little surprised to see how common oysters were as part of the meal, and delighted to find whole celery (a product of Horseheads in the early 1900s) was also quite popular.

Cranberries were also part of the vast majority of menus I found. There was cranberry sauce, cranberry jelly, cranberry sherbet, cranberry pudding, cranberry pie, or some other cranberry dish on nearly every table in homes and in restaurants for Thanksgiving dinner. Many newspaper articles included new ways to cook cranberries. But, in 1917, just seven months into the United States involvement in World War I, cranberry sauce was declared taboo on the Thanksgiving menu. There was a sugar shortage because of the war, so the New York Food Conservation Commission discourage people from serving cranberry sauce at their dinners.

Wartime shortages were common again during World War II. In 1943, articles reminded people that despite having to trim their feasts, there were still plenty of traditional dishes that could be made with slight modifications. Stuffing could be made with margarine instead of butter and sweet potatoes could be cooked with molasses rather than sugar. And don’t forget the green tomato pickles made from your own Victory Garden! Just after the end of the war, articles continued to urge people to be respectful of what food they had and not waste a single bite. They also provided a grand array of recipes for leftover turkey.

Use your leftover turkey in a casserole, in a biscuit roll, in a salad,

or in another dish listed in the Star-Gazette on November 24, 1947.

The Great Depression seemed to have had the greatest effect on the holiday menu. During that time, the specific foods served at Thanksgiving dinner took a backseat to the overarching tradition of families getting together for a hearty feast. The dishes at the feast had to be modified, sometimes significantly, because of financial situations. Even turkey had to be given up by many as a luxury. It was replaced by pork, chicken, or beef.

In 1932, an article described a series of menus with price points from $4.50 (about $85 today) to $0.75 (about $14 today) for a family of six. The top-end menu included mushroom or tomato soup, toast sticks, celery, roasted turkey with corn stuffing, giblet gravy, spiced peach relish, mashed white potatoes, onions with nut stuffing, glazed squash, whole wheat and white bread, rosy apple salad, pumpkin ginger pie or pumpkin custard for children. The least expensive menu was a pot roast of beef cooked with apricots, baked potatoes, creamed onions, and squash pie.

Despite the financial troubles of the time, the Community Coffee

 Shop offered an elaborate Thanksgiving dinner with the choice of

eight different entrées and multiple sides and desserts in 1932.

Star-Gazette, November 22, 1932

A Thanksgiving tradition that I’m sure we’re all familiar with popped up at the end of the 1932 article with the various menus – the kids’ table. Miss B. Dorothy Williams, an agent of the Chemung County Home Bureau, stated that, “undoubtedly the children will enjoy the meal more if they have a separate table then their conversation can proceed without interruption and both groups will have a better time.”

Another Thanksgiving tradition that many of us still honor today is a full day of eating, rather than just one large sit-down dinner. It seems that as soon as all the dishes are put away after the initial feast and the kitchen is cleaned up, someone starts taking leftovers out of the fridge for round two. If you would like to add a little more structure to your all-day feasting, here are a couple of menus for Thanksgiving breakfast, dinner, and supper you might enjoy.

Try this all-day Thanksgiving menu from the Star-Gazette on October 18, 1912.

Or this all-day menu from the November 24, 1936 Star-Gazette.

Happy Thanksgiving!

Stough It!

by Rachel Dworkin, archivist

On New Year’s Eve 1912, a new preacher rolled into town and he was looking to stir things up. Dr. Reverend H.W. Stough was a traveling revivalist with a serious beef against the alcohol industry. He settled into a specially-built tabernacle on the corner of William and Clinton Streets and got to work. Right away Stough made his goals clear.  “I am here,” he said at a dinner held in his honor by the Elmira Businessmen’s Association, “to awaken the moral conscience in your city.”   Almost at once he got down to the business of antagonizing the brewing industry and its allies.  “I want to serve briefs on the brewery, the stockholders, the saloon, the bartender, the thieves and the liars,” he announced in his first sermon. “The fight is on.”  

Dr. Rev. H.W. Stough

 In the early 1910s, the City of Elmira was awash with sin and alcohol. In a city with a population of 37,176 there were 93 saloons, or one for every 400 residents.  People could also drink at any one of the 33 hotels or 9 billiard halls with a liquor license and even buy hard liquor for ‘medicinal’ purposes at one of the city’s 27 drug stores.  The alcohol trade was highly profitable.  One hotel manager estimated in 1913 that he sold $37,620 worth of beer and liquor annually which amounts to approximately $887,315 in today’s dollars.  In addition to monies made from alcohol, saloons and billiard halls often made additional revenue from illegal card games or making book on baseball games while hotels cashed in on prostitution.  Despite the widespread criminal activity, there were rarely any arrests made.  In fact, Briggs Brewery would frequently send a car around to warn saloon owners in advance of a police raid.    

 

Stough was having none of it. Throughout the month of January, Stough claimed the saloons were violating the statewide ban on Sunday liquor sales; accused the police of rampant corruption and called for the resignation of Police Chief Frank Cassada; called Mayor Daniel Sheehan a lackey of the brewers; and promised to personally root out evidence of criminal behavior.  On the night of Saturday, January 25^th, he led a parade of followers through the red light district around Railroad Avenue at midnight to make sure saloons were closing for Sunday during. Stough’s antics made him more popular by the day.  At the start of the month there were only several hundred in attendance but on the 25^th there were so many people packed into the tabernacle they had to turn over 2,000 people away.  

 

Stough's specially built tabernacle

Stough was, in short, a threat to the city’s breweries and their allies in the saloons, police station and mayor’s office.  Forced to actually close on Sunday, January 26^th, the saloons and the breweries which supplied them lost money.  Stough managed to collect and publically preach about evidence of illegal doings by one Railroad Avenue saloonkeeper and the man was forced to flee the city to avoid arrest. During the 1880s, two muckraking preachers had been murdered by saloon owners in Sioux City, Iowa and Jackson, Mississippi for doing exactly the same thing as Stough. The Reverend himself had been threatened and was nearly assaulted during the January 25^th parade. His followers were harassed by the police, his lodgings were broken into and a lawsuit for slander was filed by Briggs Brewery, but none of it was enough to make him stop.

The city’s alcohol interests did the only thing they could do: frame two of the Stough campaign members for adultery. Yes, adultery. It was literally a crime in those days. On the night of February 10, they arrested Hester Cartwright, a choir singer, in the room of Duncan Spooner, the campaign’s music director, and, by February 19, the case was in court. The city’s brewing interests hoped the case would drag Stough’s name through the mud and drive him from town, but they were sadly mistaken.  

Hester Cartwright

 

Duncan Spooner

The following morning over 6,000 supporters showed up at the tabernacle to protest the arrests and raise a legal defense fund.  Throughout February, local pastors including those from First Baptist Church, Park Church and the Episcopalian churches threw their support behind Stough.  Both the Elmira Star-Gazette and the Elmira Advertiser came out in favor of real reform.  The trial was over and the couple acquitted by mid-April, but it didn’t stop the formation of several civic improvement leagues, a police commission investigation into Police Chief Frank Cassada or Mayor Sheehan being voted out of office in November.  During the trial, Briggs Brewery manager J. John Hassett said that the frame up was a matter of good business policy but clearly it was anything but. Briggs Brewery’s efforts to silence Dr. Stough in the winter of 1913 ultimately cost them hundreds of dollars in lost revenue, their ally in the mayor’s office and their good name.  Public sentiment had turned against them and in April 1916 the city voted itself bone dry, shutting down the saloons and hotels Briggs had fought so hard to keep open.

The Lady and the Tigers

by Rachel Dworkin, Archivist

In September of 1941, Ethel Nichols was on a mission, and so were the 300 men of the American Volunteer Group (AVG). Ethel, an Elmira native and member of the Southside Baptist Church, was headed for Gauhati, India, where she would be in charge of the Satri Bari Girls’ School for the next twenty years. She had joined the American Baptist Foreign Mission Society in 1920 after graduating from Elmira College and had been working in India ever since. She was headed back to her work after a visit home when she met an unusual group of men on her voyage across the Pacific.

Ethel Nichols, ca. 1920s

They, like Ethel, were classified as civilian missionaries according to their passports, but their mission was far less spiritual. In the spring of 1941, retired U.S. Army Air Corps officer Claire L. Chennault assembled a team of 100 pilots from the Navy, Marine Corps, and Army Air Corps, along with 200 ground crew personnel to help the Chinese fight the Japanese. He did so with the supplies, funding, and blessing of the United States government.

AVG personnel were transported across the Pacific in small batches. There were thirty-eight of them on Ethel’s ship. Ethel described them in her letter of September 10, 1941: 

I mentioned a group on board. Guess I can tell you about them now. They are 38 young men, aviators and engineers, on a secret mission. We can guess that they will be on the Burma Road. They were listed as “missionaries”—part of the secret I suppose. That’s why we ran out of beer or low on it. My partner, “Twisty” is one of the “38.” We always speak of them as the “the 38” or sometimes the “38 missionaries.” We are about divided into thirds.: 1/3 missionaries, 1/3 businessmen, and 1/3 the “38.”

So much for secrecy. 

Ethel's letter of September 10, 1941

In his autobiography Baa Baa Black Sheep, Gregory Boyington, an AVG pilot described his own trip across the Pacific aboard the Dutch ship Bosch Fontein with 26 other pilots. They managed to blow their cover the first night. 

Of course it took very little time before these genuine missionaries realized that we were traveling under false colors and weren’t missionaries at all. But the manner by which they let us know that they knew was done rather cleverly…One day one of the real missionaries came up and asked if I would give the sermon for next Sunday’s services, explaining that the duty rotated. I had to decline the invitation to lead the services…As it was, the same missionary invited me to next Sunday services aboard ship. He was one of the younger missionaries, and he himself gave the sermon. But as he did so (I was seated in one of the front rows) he seemed to direct the entire sermon at me and the group I represented.  His point was how horrible it was for people to fight for money. 

Gregory Boyington's autobiography

Nicknamed the Flying Tigers, the AVG proved vital in delaying the fall of Rangoon and preventing the Japanese from advancing into China beyond the west bank of the upper Salween River. Their combat record was exemplary with a kill ratio better than any Allied unit in the Pacific theater. They were disbanded on July 4, 1942 and the surviving members were integrated back into the regular U.S. military. 

Ethel Nichols continued to work in North East India until her retirement in May 1961. In addition to running Satri Bari Girls’ School, she was established training classes to teach rural girls about basic health care and Christian life. After her retirement, the Council of Baptist Churches in North East India established the Nichols English School in her honor.