Wordless Wednesday:m SeaBees

Wordless Wednesday: Onondaga Historical Society part 2

Wordless Wednesday- In Honor of Memorial Day A Random Sampling

Fold 3 Has Some Free Access This Month!

 Fold 3 is offering free access to World War II records for the month of December! Go here to check it out:

 https://go.fold3.com/wwii/

Here are the ones I'll be looking for as well as Allen Ward whose picture I don't have.:

Burton Ward

Marion J. Wooster

Robert Wooster

 

 

 

Lester Wooster

Almost Wordless Wednesday- In Honor of Memorial Day

Just a few from my Wooster line that served during conflicts and that I have pictures of their burial sites.

Robert Tifft burial site. Revolutionary War

Orrin Wooster. Civil War

Marion Wooster. WWI and WWII.

Alice Wooster. WWI

Robert Wooster. WWII

Saturday Challenge- Mother's Day

The Saturday Challenge:
1)  This is Mother's Day weekend, so please go through the photographs you have of your mother and share one of your favorite photograph of her.  Just one.  Oh, tell us why it's one of your favorites, and tell us something about your mother, too.

Spring Cherry Blossoms

As my brother's will certainly tell you, I'm not always good about following directions. Today is one of those. My mother has hated the camera and for years will duck out of a picture or hide her face. It is hard to get a good picture of her unless it is a candid shot. She seems to hate every single picture that she is in. So, instead, today I am posting some of what were probably some of her mother's favorite pictures of the family. They were found in a collection of family pictures and were put together on one page as a collage probably by her, which is why I believe they were some favorites:

Collage from my grandparents collection

 In the upper left is a photo of my grandmother, Alice Jennings Wooster in middle-age. To the right is a picture of her husband, Marion J. Wooster and her son Kenneth. This was taken in November 1942 when Grandpa was serving in the SeaBees during WWII. The bottom oval is that of my mother, Alice Wooster Ward and her brother Lester as children.

Seabees

Today I came across a short article from Yankee Magazine that talked about the Quonset huts that were developed during WWII. They’re a cylindrical metal building that you see around occasionally in industrial areas or even sometimes as homes. There’s one such a street away from where my mother lives.

Quonset Huts in Daviesville, Rhode Island

Named after the place in Rhode Island where they were first built, I always think of the Navy’s Construction Battalion, better known as the Seabees which formed during this time period, when I see one. This unit of the military was the only one that accepted “old men” at that time into their ranks. To quote Kenneth Wooster’s writings:

“By August 1942, he also joined the service. Too old, at 46, to be accepted by any other branch, he joined the US Navy Seabees. He spent time in  (Port of Spain) Trinidad, Hawaii and the Philippines, arriving home a few days before the end of the war in the Pacific.”

The “he” that Kenneth is referring to is his father, my grandfather, Marion Wooster. Already a veteran of the First World War he was a carpenter and spent the war years building roads and I’m sure many of the Quonset huts in these places. At one point he was stationed at the Navy base in Rhode Island when my grandmother got to visit him.

Marion in November 1942 Skaneateles, NY

A few years ago while doing some genealogy research in Rhode Island I discovered that the base has a museum to the Seabees and was privileged to visit there. It isn’t much of a museum and was obviously struggling to keep open, but there was something special about walking around there and knowing that my grandfather had likely tread the exact same ground I was. 

Seabees Mascot