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Walter held the back door open for Myra, Mitchell and Marvin. He sat next to Bea, with Sandra on her lap, in the front seat. The short ride home was in total silence.

Slamming the door shut, “Thanks, Al. I’ll give you a call later.”

Putting the Buick into gear, Al drove away.

The walk up the three flights of stairs seemed to be hard. Walter, who usually took the steps two or three at a time, held onto the banister, pulling himself, almost wearily, upward. Walking behind, as if having to catch her breath, Myra stopped every few steps.

“Mommy, Daddy,” looking from one to the other, “what’s wrong?”

This typical Sunday was December 7, 1941.

The Japanese had bombed Pearl Harbor.

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Chicago, Illinois

1941 Forward

Who goes, who stays?

Al Marcus was too old. The Army, the Navy, and certainly the Marines, did not want him. More than happy, Al was ecstatic

.

Walter Lipensky was too old also and the Army didn’t want him either. He was happy, for the sake of his wife and child, but for Walter Lipensky, approaching thirty‑seven years of age and feeling life passing with none of the esprit, the verve he’d dreamt of as a young man…

Walter loved his wife and he loved his child. But unknown to anyone but himself he’d have given anything to be free of the responsibility and be part of the fray… but he wasn’t.

Myra’s older brother, Jerry, was rejected due to a chronic back problem. Sheldon did enlist in the army and, upon completion of basic training, due to his college credits in engineering, was immediately transferred to the Corps of Army Engineers.

The Grand Manufacturing Company, the Lipensky business, named “Grand” for Grand Avenue where it was located rather than its grand size, which it wasn’t, went out of business because it produced a “non‑essential” product using “essential” material.

Walter and his three brothers went their separate ways.

Jake, the eldest, had a working knowledge in the field of electronics and became a civilian instructor for the U.S. Navy.

Walter, the second eldest, went to work in a defense plant.

Frank, the third brother, attempted to salvage something from the ashes of the old company and began to manufacture a household item made of wood, a non‑essential material. But, as it turned out, the item was non‑essential also.

Ira, the youngest of the four boys, was the only one of draftable age and he enlisted in the Army Air Corps.

                                                              The War Effort

Americans were asked to:

Search their cabinets, drawers and boxes.

Rummage through their basements.

Forage their sheds.

Comb their attics.

Find anything—anything—that may be useful to the War Effort.

They were collected by:

Adults in cars, trucks, and horse‑drawn carts.

Children dragging factory‑manufactured, or homemade orange‑crate 

wagons                 .

There were:

Scrap steel drives.

Newspaper drives.

Rag drives.

Milkweed drives…

Milkweed? Even milkweed was collected from empty lots  to make fillings for life‑jackets.

They came:

From the country.

From the cities.

From neighborhood to neighborhood.

From block to block.

From house to house.

From room to room.

For the country!

For our country!

For America!

God Bless America!