Part of a series of articles titled What Daddy and Mother did in the War.
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What Daddy and Mother did in the War (Part 5)
This is Part 5 of “What Daddy and Mother Did in the War,” by their daughter, Stephanie Johnson Dixon. Read Part 4 first.
Stephanie Dixon
Shirley Allen's War
Mother did her part too. Shirley Eloise Allen was a bright and energetic girl. She grew up the oldest of four girls, daughters of Willie Mae (Bill) and George Allen. She shared chores around the house with her sisters Sue, George Ann, and Lanell. Shirley preferred the outdoor work and was assigned to chop wood. When her children were growing up, they could never talk her into getting a fireplace. She did not see the romance in it.
George Allen, her father, was a logger and farmer. Mammy was a housewife and often worked outside the home as a clerk in one of the downtown stores. While our father was risk aversive our mother was drawn to risk. One might say that it was in her genes, for her father brought home extra money with gambling. Her mother, Bill, told a grandchild once, “We would have starved to death during the Depression if it hadn’t been for your Big Daddy’s (George) gambling.”
But family pictures show a happy family, with smiling little girls dressed up in nice clothes, either made by Bill Allen or store-bought by her sister, Edith. Edith didn’t have children till later and she doted on her nieces.
In high school Shirley was a top athlete, captaining the girls’ basketball team, participating in both junior high and senior high basketball, picking up All District honors as a forward, and being a cheerleader for the boy’s teams. She never got over the cheerleading part.
Her last few years of high school she surprised even herself by coming into her own as a student. She was named to the National Honor Society. She once told Stephanie that it was one of the most surprising moments of her life, because she had some truly brilliant classmates (Charles West, Mary Jane Shoffet, and others), and she didn’t place herself among the smarter kids. This surprise to her was despite being a voracious reader and a polite youngster who was respectful in class. She tried to listen. I suspect that her earlier lack of shining in the classroom was due to a tendency to let her attention wander, probably due to undiagnosed hyperactivity in the lower grades.
But she was smart enough that college was not out of the question. Her parents expected that she would attend college upon her high school graduation. This is fairly remarkable because college attendance was not nearly the norm at the time. Plus, neither of her parents was highly educated. Bill, or Willie Mae, completed tenth grade at T. A. Futrall in Marianna. George’s formal education stopped after eighth grade. But both of them were intelligent people and they obviously respected higher education. They wanted the best for their daughters, all of whom George said were "perfect."
Stephanie Dixon
How Ya Gonna Keep 'Em Down on the Farm?: Leaving Home
Their attitude was even more notable because Shirley graduated from T. A. Futrall in l943, near the end of the Great Depression when there was little money for extras like higher education. Compounding factors were the fact the three younger Allen girls were still to be raised. Also, George had recently gone back into his first choice of profession, farming. Times were tight and if farming was a quick road to anything, it was bankruptcy.
Still, when Shirley approached her mother and father after graduation and told them that she didn’t want to go to college right then, Bill and George were surprised. George was aghast. Shirley’s closest in age sister, Sue (later to become Holman), told Stephanie in a recent phone conversation that she remembered the situation well. Many of the young men in Shirley’s graduating class joined the services upon graduation and others were drafted. Edward “Possum” Christensen, later Shirley’s brother-in-law, was drafted straight after his graduation, only a few years after Shirley’s completed high school. Plus, several young women Shirley knew were moving to places with defense industries to make their contributions to the war effort.
Of the big decision, Sue said that Shirley went to her parents one evening. “Shirley told them that she wanted to go to college eventually, but that right then she felt that she should take part in the war effort. She also said that her going off to school would put too much strain on the family,” Sue said. “Daddy wanted her to go straight to school. If she had, she would have had her degree or been close to it by the time the war was over and she met your dad. But Mother stepped in and said, ‘George, if this is what she wants to do….She wants to do this for her country and for herself. I do believe that she will go to school.”
Sue added that the stipulation from the parents was that Shirley would have to live with Bill Allen’s mother, Sudie, Shirley‘s grandmother. Shirley and her sisters called their mother “Mother,” and their grandmother “Mama.” The next generation referred to Sudie Belew, their great-grandmother as “Mama Belew.” Sudie Belew lived in Memphis with her second husband, Henry Belew. They lived in a just- purchased duplex on Stonewall, right across the street from Sudie’s other daughter from her first marriage to Dyke Edwards, Edith Coats. (Holman) It was a cozy arrangement until Sudie died at the age of 102.
Sudie and Henry had a daughter named Laura Elizabeth, a much-married woman who died in her forties. Laura and one of her earlier husbands, a man named Bill, were then living in Biloxi, Mississippi where they both worked in the ship-building industry. Henry Belew, a plasterer by trade, had moved to New Orleans temporarily to also build ships. The Depression had not been good to the building trades or any other kind of trade, and everybody who could get a job somewhere immediately ran to get one when they started opening up.
So Sudie had a house for a granddaughter to share. Bill and George insisted that they would overlook their misgivings ONLY if Shirley moved in with her grandmother. Sue said, “Shirley wasn’t bad to run around and get in trouble, but she was an attractive young woman. Mother and Daddy just felt that she would be safe if she lived at Mama’s house. I know she dated a little when she was over there, but not much. Mostly she worked.”
Ain't Misbehaving: Working at the Army Depot
Shirley made her way to Memphis and found work at the Army Depot. Sue isn’t sure, but thinks that their aunt, Edith, may have been able to help Shirley find a job. At the time Edith was working for the Corps of Engineers in Memphis and would have had an inside track on helping a relative find government-related work. Plus, anyone who ever knew Aunt Edith Coats knows that she would have gone through hell and high water to help out one of her nieces, especially if it meant that she would be living across the street from her. This may not be what Shirley originally had in mind, but she went off to Memphis with a sense of adventure and patriotic fervor.
The Memphis Army Depot was no small thing. It was a complex of 103 buildings, mostly warehouses connected by 26 miles of railroad track and 25 miles of road. Its purpose was to supply the military with every thing it could possibly need, with the exception of weapons and munitions. (Finger)
In 1941 The Commercial Appeal announced plans for the depot and estimated that it would cover 25,000,000 square feet and would cost $12,500, 000 to build. A 550 acre tract off Airways Boulevard near the Frisco Railroad Yard was selected as the spot. (Maxwell) When completed it covered 642 acres. (Finger)
The paper tried to put the size of the project into perspective in a way that its readers could understand. It said: “It will be big enough for 16 major league baseball teams to play 8 games simultaneously…with 30,000 fans at each game and room left over for several football games.” (Maxwell)
Plans also called for room to hold 1,000 rail freight cars, since most of the supplies would have to be transported by rail. By January of 1942 , with only 55% of it completed, it opened after only six months of construction. Before final construction was finished plans were drawn to add on. The depot closed in 1997.
Its dedication ceremony took place on April 1, 1942. It was officially named the Memphis Quartermaster Depot. The first call for civilian workers other than construction people was for 1,800 clerical workers. Ten thousand people applied. The Depression was over, but good jobs, especially government jobs, were at a premium. (Maxwell) There was a branch of the Army Depot off Jackson Avenue and it is possible that Shirley may have also worked there. It was closer to where she resided with her grandmother.
The employees of the Army Depot evidently considered themselves patriots as well as employees. Most of them, like Shirley Allen, were there to help in the war effort. A case in point is when many civilian employees started a movement to refuse overtime pay. And there was considerable overtime to be made. Federal law required that overtime pay be offered, but legally it could be refused and often was out of simple patriotism. In an attempt to avoid breaking its own laws, the government had to get creative. They built a beauty shop at the depot and allowed the women during slack times to clock out and go get their hair and nails done. (Maxwell)
At its peak strength in June 1943 the Depot had 4,726 civilian and 162 military personnel. (Finger) It obviously was a boon the Memphis economy. The Depot had a chemical warfare and Corps of Engineers study section. It was not without grim reminders of what happens in war. Part of the depot space was given over to the American Graves Registry Service Distribution for Deceased Veterans, which held the returned remains of the area’s war dead. (Maxwell)
What secrets did the depot hold? What items passed through its doors? It handled all of the food coming from the Mid-South growers…the meat, produce, dairy, and vegetables. Dehydrated foods were stored. Space devoted to coffee, coffee roasting, blending, and packaging was estimated to allow for 1 million cups of coffee daily. This last item would have been of great interest to my mother, a certified coffee fiend.
Army shoes, mess kits, parachutes, first aid kits, belts, and fatigues came through there. Floating bridges and camouflage equipment also were stored. At one point 8 crates of dogs were brought through. Late in the war part of the depot housed a prisoner of war camp, mostly holding captured German soldiers.(Maxwell)
Shirley Allen worked as a clerk and later as an office worker. She told Stephanie that she did light typing in an office as part of her job. Sue believes that she mostly clerked in the supply depot. Sue doesn’t not know what sort of supplies. Shirley didn’t discuss any of that with the family, obviously on direction from the Army, but at one time many years after the war she did mention something about “parachutes.”
Sue relates, “She couldn’t talk about it. You know the old saying, ‘Loose lips sink ships.’ Shirley was very tight-lipped anyway. I’d come in and tell everything. Not Shirley, She never did anything bad, but we’d go out and she’d tell me not to tell Mother and Daddy anything about it because ‘they didn’t need to know.’ Well, she sure was like that about her job. She told us it was all ‘Hush-Hush.’”
She would have made a good spy if she ever could have developed a poker face. Unlike her poker playing father, one could read everything she was thinking by watching her face.
Part of Shirley’s plan was to save any money she made for college. This couldn’t have been easy, because she had to pay Mama Belew room and board (though Sue figures that she probably only paid toward groceries), and of course, there were clothes to be bought. Shirley Allen was a clothes horse.
“She bought some beautiful clothes. She didn’t get to come home very often because it was too expensive, but when she did come she’d bring these lovely clothes and she’d let me wear them,” Sue stated. “I remember this one thing she had, a gorgeous yellow coat. She offered to let me wear it to a party and she wore mine. Sometimes I’d be going somewhere with friends or on a date and Shirley would say “This will look good on you; why don’t you wear it?”
Her family obviously was of tremendous importance to Shirley and she was sensitive to its needs. She once related a painful episode regarding her days of working in Memphis. She said that she had to work overtime at the depot on the run-up to Christmas. Everyone had been given Christmas off, but had to be back at work the next morning. This would have been in 1943, at the very height of the war. It meant that she wouldn’t be able to go home for Christmas to be with her family, although Memphis is only 50 miles from Marianna. The roads were not very good them, gasoline was scarce, she didn’t have a car, and all train tickets had been booked.
She started Christmas morning feeling miserable, homesick, and crying. Then she decided to take a chance and went to the train station (probably hitched a ride with Aunt Edith). Still, no tickets were to be had. Her disappointment must have shown on her face, because a rail worker told her that if she was willing to ride in the baggage car, she would be allowed to do that. So she climbed aboard the baggage car, found a mail bag to sit on and rode in the unheated car to Marianna. She walked several blocks home, surprising and thrilling her family, just in time for Christmas dinner.
When telling that story, she seemed very proud of herself for taking charge of the situation and taking the risk. She felt that it was worth it. It seemed to be a pivotal point in her life.
This is Part 5 of "What Daddy and Mother did in the War." Read Part 6 next.
Last updated: July 1, 2022