Ruth Fugere-Downs. My first husband died when he was 58 but I kept his last name when I married my second husband James

I had a sister and a brother but both were younger so they don’t have many recollections about the war.

We moved around a lot when I was real young but most of my life I was raised on Millbury Street. It was a nice, clean neighborhood that was very close-knit and depended on each other. Now all the places I grew up in are slums and haven’t been maintained. It’s a real shame.

I was almost 11 years old when we heard the news on the radio that the Japanese had bombed Pearl Harbor. I felt the same way on December 7^th then I felt September 11^th. At first it was unbelief, then when it started to sink in, it was a feeling of total

helplessness. The lives of everyone changed that day.

Some of our neighbors were being drafted into the service. They would train for 2 months and were being shipped overseas. Factories were losing employees because of the draft. The factories started hiring women to replace the lost workers. When I was in the 6^th grade, I remember having to bring a blanket to leave at school in the event there was an air raid.

We had to practice for those the way children rehearse for fire drills today. We would grab our blankets and march down to the basement of the school and huddle together on the dark, damp dirt covered floor until the bell rang to call us back to our classrooms. I remember that the younger children used to cry because they were frightened in the dark. One little girl was so scared she would have an asthma attack. Since I had asthma I would cuddle her and try to calm her down so she could breathe properly. We would be given free oranges at school everyday because so many families were missing their wage earning dads and they had little food on their tables.

We had to use food stamps, gas stamps and clothing stamps in order to purchase certain things. Meat was scarce and we were only allowed a certain amount of stamps for meat per month. When we would run out of meat coupons, my mother would send me to the grocers to buy ground horsemeat. No stamps were needed for horsemeat- only beef, pork and poultry.(Brief pause).

We were only allowed to purchase two pairs of shoes a year. I’m glad I loved to go barefoot in the summer, it conserved my shoes for school.

We were already pretty close. I will never forget how angry my dad was when they made him turn in all his tires except the four that were on the car. He had just purchased new tires, including a set of heavy duty snow tires for winter. He turned them in as he was told, along with the sales slip for eight dollars each. He received a check from the United States Government for fifty cents. He was so disgusted that he never cashed the check.

My dad was in the State Guards and he helped set up the Civil Defense headquarters in the basement of the library. I joined the Civil Defense when I was thirteen. My assigned job was to ride my bicycle around assigned areas of town to make sure that everyone had their windows blocked off so no light could be seen from the street. If any light showed through the curtains, I was to notify them and make sure they blocked out the light. I also was a runner to deliver messages to the different quadrants. It was a little scary riding my bicycle in the pitch black of the night. The scariest part was when I could see two white stripes in the road ahead and realize that I was next door neighbor to a skunk.

She stayed at home and took care of the kids. Every Wednesday afternoon, after school, my Mom and I would head down to the Town Hall where we would roll bandages for the Red Cross. Thousands of rolls of bandages that were sent to our armed services got their origins at the town hall.

I think my mother was happy and content being home. When we grew up and out of the house, um, she probably got lonely but she never complained or anything. She was a strong woman and my father was a strong man.

I remember going to McGowan bridge at 4:00 in the afternoon to watch for the troop trains that were going through Worcester from Fort Devens. We would wave and yell at the soldiers. People were into it, the economy was rolling and everyone was right behind our troops. They had a lot of support back home.

At the time I started corresponding with a few of the local men that were drafted. My grandfather gave me the names of some of the men from the shop where he worked who had no family or who had very few people to write to them. I shared all the hometown news and tried to send words that were encouraging. I was writing to my uncle’s brother who was only nineteen. He was a tail gunner in a B-57. His plane was shot down over Germany in 1944 and his body was not returned to the family until sometime in the 60’s. Both my husbands were veterans war.

Those were the good old days when we started the school days with the Lord’s Prayer. The days when we could talk about God and Jesus and not have to worry if we were offending anyone. We did a lot of praying for our troops and also for the families who were suffering great losses.

I didn’t see it but I was so young I probably wouldn’t have known it even if I saw was going on. There were a couple Germans and Jews in the class but they were left alone. No one ever blamed them for starting or provoking the horrible war.

No again I was only eleven so I didn’t really know what was going on in the world. I did used to hear white people refer to blacks as colored or the "n" word. But my family was pretty open minded and we were never taught to hate a certain group of people. That is one of the fondest memories I have of his life

Our prayers were answered when we go the news that the war was over. It is something that I will never forget. I think every person on the face of the earth was celebrating in town. I have never seen so many people at one time. We started to form a conga line and dance through the town. Up and down the streets. Everywhere you looked you could see a long line. We danced all the way to the chapel and back down through the Old Common and back to the Center, and still saw people in the line. It was several hours before the line broke up.

It was a time when everyone pulled together for the same cause. It was unity. We showed our love for our country and for our fellow man. It was a time when we all united in love for a special cause. What a shame it is that we have to have a national tragedy in order to bring forth such a loving relationship with our fellow men. It takes a tragedy to make us do what God intended for us to do right along. That love is with us no, but as this tragedy slips into the archives of history so too will the nature of the human being forget what we are here for. That is to love each and everyone of God’s children regardless of color and denomination. How sad it is that our faith tends to wane when we are in a comfortable place in our life.

Certainly, any time.