Mother’s Day 1944, “Bruce” was due in a couple of weeks

The Wilson family’s service flag in the window shows that five sons are serving in the war. Dale Wilson had been MIA since the November before.

One day in May 1944, Doris (staying in Iowa to have her first baby) wrote Warren (teaching advanced cadets in Texas) that she’d just had a perfect day. She and her mother (Leora) did the laundry so she and “Bruce” (the baby-to-be) got lots of sunshine while hanging clothes out on the line. That afternoon, they’d walked up the hill to watch her father (Clabe) plow, then came back through the timber and picked wildflowers.

May is the essence of spring in Iowa, with blues and purples of wild violets, the frothy white of plum thickets, songs of migrating birds of all kinds, and an earthy, woodsy aroma.

For Mother’s Day, Doris bought flowers for the front steps for her mother, fixed her hair, and they must have gone to town since Leora is all dressed up.

Leora Wilson, Mother’s Day. May 14, 1944, Minburn, Iowa

Another day the ladies helped Clabe get a couple of sows penned in. Those sows didn’t want to give up their little weed patches for a hog house with clean straw, Doris wrote her husband, but with “a little maneuvering and persuasion,” they finally did. 

“Isn’t that interesting?” she wrote. “Fourteen sows have little pigs, two cows have calves (so far), and two cats have kittens. Guess maybe I’ll be next.” 

“Bruce” was due in a couple of weeks.

From Leora’s Letters: The Story of Love and Loss for an Iowa Family During World War II