Centenarian Blasts Civilian Indifference In October 1943
GGet into a conversation with a long-time

From top to bottom: Queensbridge Houses

Queens resident

and you're likely to discover a subscriber of the Long Island Star-Journal, a daily paper that informed the community about local and world news until it folded in 1968. A banner across the Star-Journal masthead reminded readers that the newspaper's name came from the merger of the Long Island Daily Star (1876) and the North Shore Daily Journal--The Flushing Journal (1841).

Welcome to October 1943!

On October 9, Rome was tense as Allied troops moved within 100 miles of the Italian capital. Vatican City hastily constructed a makeshift reservoir, fearing the retreating Germans would destroy the city infrastructure as they had when they abandoned Naples a few months before. Mussolini was mulling a move to Bologna as his government as well as thousands of residents started fleeing the doomed city. Inside Rome, all bus and streetcar traffic ground to a halt. When roads jammed with German military traffic prevented supplies from reaching the city, most stores closed.

history.sandiego.edu Henry Kaiser, the West Coast shipbuilder.

In Russia, Red Army pincers started closing in on Kiev, the capital of the Ukraine.

Flushing's last Civil War veteran, Ringold Carman, turned 100, and the Star Journal interviewed him about the war. Peering into the future with a vision born of 100 years as a soldier and patriot, he predicted Germany's defeat. "Hitler is the cause of this whole conflict and I am so mad that I feel I could lick him myself," the centenarian said. He said that Japan would get out of the war on her own accord soon after Germany's fall.

"For a decade after the Civil War, I traveled as a salesman throughout the United States. I saw what his country meant to those people…blood, sweat and tears. They were willing to support the country with money, power, and life itself," he said. "That feeling has changed a good bit during the passing years. Today I see some people acting as through they didn't realize that the United States is now fighting the greatest war it has ever fought. A good many people are interested only in themselves and their personal matters and if these few spent as much time on the war effort as they did on themselves, the war would be over that much quicker."

home.comcast.net/~lowe9101/mu ssolini/hitmuss.jpg Mussolini with Adolph Hitler during a parade.

The last Queens survivor of the George Huntsman Post, Grand Army of the Republic, Carmen was born in Philadelphia on October 4, 1843. When he was 15, he ran away from home to enlist in the 24th Regiment of the Pennsylvania Infantry as a drummer boy. He served in an artillery command under Generals Butler, Burnside, Hooker, McClellan and Grant until the end of the war and took part in the battles of Bull Run, Antietam, Chancellorsville, the Wilderness, Fredericksburg, Gettysburg and Malvern Hill.

He was a sharpshooter at Chancellorsville when Stonewall Jackson was killed a short distance away. One of his best recollections of the Civil War was his meeting with Abraham Lincoln while he was detailed as a color sergeant in Richmond. For many years he held "one man meetings" of the post until he gave the charter over to the Flushing Historical collection at the Flushing Library in 1941.

A series of events was planned in the local community on his birthday, including a bond rally later that week, which raised $70,000.

Congressmember Carl Vinson (D-Georgia), in testimony before the House Naval Affairs Committee, increased his pressure on management of the Brewster Aeronautical Corporation. In a blistering attack on Brewster's "failure to deliver airplanes in anywhere near the quantity that it should have", he spread the blame equally on the Navy, labor, and management. Meanwhile, Henry Kaiser, the West Coast shipbuilder who had became chairman of the company a few months back, was seeking complete control over the beleaguered airplane manufacturer.

On October 14, the company again was in the news as the subject of damning testimony by Undersecretary of the Navy James V. Forrestal. In testimony before the House Naval Subcommittee in Washington, he outlined a sorry record of weak management and chronic labor troubles of the 10,000-man workforce for the public record. Not only was the Navy's Brewster bomber 10 months behind schedule, but basic technical problems were not yet addressed.

In further testimony, witnesses claimed that workers in Brewster plants had "engaged in scandalous loafing on the job, openly played dice and slept in unfinished aircraft.". Brewster was described as "shocking" and a "wasteful use of manpower".

On October 21, a story reported that some 2,000 women living in the Queensbridge Houses were afraid to join the war effort because of fear that the increased income would push them above the family income limit. When yet another increase was suggested for the limit, which had just been raised from $1,900 to $3,000, Mayor Fiorello LaGuardia expressed his disagreement. He wrote, "You must see the manifest unfairness of having a family with a high income remain in the subsidized housing when families living in substandard housing and not able to pay high rent are waiting for a chance."

On October 24, more than 100,000 people marched along Hillside Avenue in the ninth annual Queens Navy Day. The Coast Guard artillery band from Fort Totten led the way as contingents from both the Brooklyn Navy Yard and Merchant Marine Academy marched with National Guard, American Legion, Veterans of Foreign Wars, Civil Defense, Jewish War Veterans, Catholic War Veterans, veteran units from both the Canadian and British Armed Forces, Boy Scouts and church groups. The reviewing stand held a number of captains, vice admirals and brigadier generals.

On October 29, a conference at City Hall determined how brightly the lights in Queens and elsewhere might shine when the 18- month "dim- out ban" was lifted. Early in 1942, just after the war started, transportation, homes, and businesses were under regulations that were designed to eliminate as much as possible the glare from lights. Civil Defense was concerned that in the unlikely event Nazi bombers could cross the ocean, or, more likely, submarines could surface, city lights would provide excellent illumination for potential targets.

Officials were mulling over restoring of full lighting to 5,100 subway cars and 348 elevated stations, for automobiles, abolishing the 20-mile-an-hour speed limit at night and removal of black paint from headlights, and for stores, resumption of full window lighting. The phasing out of "dim- out" regulations was due to the success in chasing submarines from the Eastern Seaboard as well as an increase in auto accidents.

That's the way it was in October 1943!

The Society is open to the public on Saturdays, noon to 4 p.m. at Quinn's Gallery, 4th Floor, 35-20 Broadway, Long Island City.

In the 20th century, the American skyscraper regularly pushed the limit, from the Singer, Met Life and Woolworth buildings to the Chrysler and the Empire State and eventually the World Trade Center. Was it strictly dollars and cents? Or was something more at play? On Monday November 5 at 7 p.m., historian Anthony Wayne Robbins will discuss why mankind has been powerfully attracted to the idea of buildings rising into the clouds in a lecture/presentation: "Why So High? The World's Tallest Building", at Greater Astoria Historical Society headquarters, Quinn's Gallery, 4th Floor, 35-20 Broadway, Long Island City. Free to GAHS members, $5 for non- members.

For more information, call the Greater Astoria Historical Society at 718-278-0700 or visit www.astorialic.org.