By the first day of school, Eddie was ready. He had convinced Mama and Dad that he could make it, even though Maude insisted on driving him the few blocks to school.
Laura and Eddie weren’t in the same fifth-grade classroom. Yvonne was in Miss Burch’s class with Eddie, and Kenny was in Mrs. Jamison’s class with Laura.
“I’ll take care of him,” Yvonne whispered to Laura as they stood in the hall reading the list of students in each room. “I’ll treat him like he was my very own brother.”
Laura started to object, but decided that maybe Yvonne needed a brother. Not that she was giving Eddie away, but she was willing to share him with her friend.
Right after Mrs. Jamison introduced herself, she explained the air-raid procedure. For the last two years, Laura’s father had assured her over and over that the Japanese couldn’t fly a plane close enough to shore to bomb them. But she remembered that radio program about the Germans launching buzz bombs from long distances away. If one of those came, then the students wouldn’t even have time to get underneath their desks.
How was Eddie going to get under his desk? He couldn’t squat down like the rest of them. Surely his teacher was fixing some special place for him to be safe. At recess, Laura asked him, and he said they hadn’t had air-raid instructions yet, but he’d make sure his teacher found a place for him.
At one end of the playground, a group of boys played kickball. Laura, Yvonne, and Kenny grouped around Eddie and talked about everything they could think of except the kickball game. Eddie kept glancing at the boys with the ball, and Laura saw a grim determination light his eyes. He shifted on his crutches when the ball got away from the boys and came straight at him.
“I can kick with my good leg,” he said.
“You will not!” Yvonne exclaimed before Laura could object. But her words didn’t keep Eddie from moving his weight to his bad leg and crutches before kicking the ball with his left foot. Because of his awkward angle, the ball went only a couple feet.
“A cripple can’t play,” Keith Rhodes called as he ran toward them for the ball.
“Ignore him,” Laura said. She kicked the ball as hard as she could, and it sailed to the other end of the playground. Good. Keith could chase that silly ball.
“Keith’s a creep,” Kenny said. “You need practice, that’s all. Maybe we can borrow a kickball sometime and work on it.”
“Mama says you can learn to walk without crutches. That ought to be first,” Laura said.
Eddie immediately handed his crutches to Kenny and took a few wobbly steps. Laura grabbed the crutches and propped him up. He seemed glad for the help.
“It’ll just take practice,” she said. “Look how fast you learned to walk with crutches.”
“I’ll put more weight on that leg every day. By the end of the month, I’ll be playing kickball.”
“Sure you will,” Laura said, and she half-believed it. Sometimes she thought his leg would get better, and other days she knew it never would. She still prayed about it because Mama said she should.
The bell rang, calling the students back to the classrooms. Eddie gave Laura a smile and a see-you-later nod as he hobbled into Miss Burch’s room.
Mrs. Jamison handed out arithmetic books and assigned a page of twenty problems. A half hour later, she took up the papers and switched the subject to government.
“Because this is an election year, and since our government is in the forefront because of the war, we’re going to have an election in our classroom. We’ll elect a classroom president to be in charge of our war-stamp program. You will want to elect someone who has leadership skills and is a good organizer. Anyone who wants to run should pick up one of these nomination forms, fill it out, and bring it back to school tomorrow.” She held up several small sheets.
Laura glanced at the other students. Which one of the boys would make a good president? She didn’t know all the boys in her class, but no outstanding candidate came to mind. She would make a better president. Laura sat up straighter in her desk. Why couldn’t a girl be president? She knew how to organize. Hadn’t she been keeping good records at the hotel office? Mama had told her last night that she’d like Laura to take a shift at the office after she got home from school.
She started to hold up her hand to ask if a girl could run but thought better of it. She’d ask in private, after school.
The rest of the day passed slowly as Laura waited for her opportunity to get a form. When the last bell rang, she hung back as the other students rushed for the door. As she pretended to search her desk for something, she watched the teacher’s desk out of the corner of her eye. Two boys picked up forms. When all of the students were out of the room, she walked to the desk and picked up a form.
“Is this just for boys?” she asked.
“Oh!” Mrs. Jamison said and looked a long moment at Laura. “I guess a girl could run. Sure, why not? But you must be aware that your chances at being elected aren’t as good as a boy’s.”
“I’m a good organizer,” Laura said.
“I’m sure you are, but that has nothing to do with it. Students usually vote for boys, but that doesn’t mean you won’t get any votes. Give it some serious thought, Laura. If you still want to run, turn in your form tomorrow. It would be interesting calling someone ‘Madam President.’”
CHAPTER 5
The Elections
I never heard of a girl president,” Eddie said at supper that night.
“Does that mean there can’t be one?” Laura asked.
“It sure doesn’t,” Margie said. “A few years ago no one would have believed I could work at Boeing in production. Now there are lots of women who work on the line.”
“But that’s because of the war,” Gary said. “Pass the potatoes, please.”
“Girls are as smart as boys, aren’t they, Dad?” Margie asked. Laura was glad she’d waited until suppertime to start this discussion about the class election. She wanted Margie on her side.
“I’m not getting into this kind of argument,” Dad said with a grin. “Especially with your mother sitting here.”
“If you want to be president, then you should go for it,” Margie said. “I don’t know if you’d win, but you should run. I’ll help you with your campaign speech.”
“I don’t know if we give speeches,” Laura said. “But I could put up a banner like the one we made for Eddie.”
“It’s all right with me if you’re a candidate,” Mama said. She looked at Dad. “Any objections?”
“Not as long as she knows that her chances of winning are slim.” He looked at Laura. “I don’t want you to be disappointed.”
“I won’t be. I’m going to win,” she said. At his frown, she added, “Maude says to always have a positive attitude. So that’s what I’m going to do. Think positive.” She handed the nomination form to Gary, who passed it to Ginny, who passed it to Dad. “You have to sign it to indicate that you know the duties of the president include the war-stamp collection.”
The next day at school, Laura handed in her completed form.
“Yours is the third one,” Mrs. Jamison said. “I gave out three yesterday, so the race is on.” She looked over the forms, and when the bell rang, she called the class to order. They said the Lord’s Prayer and the Pledge of Allegiance, and then Mrs. Jamison asked Laura, Jay Armstrong, and Keith Rhodes to come to the front of the class.
“These three students are running for president of our class. We’ll let them talk to the class tomorrow and answer any questions you may have, and then on Thursday we’ll vote on our class president.”
“What do we talk about?” Jay asked.
“Why you would make a good class president,” Mrs. Jamison said. “You don’t have to give a long speech. A couple of minutes will do. You may be seated.”
Laura walked to her desk and thought of reasons why she’d make a good president. She jotted her ideas down on paper so she could remember them when she was standing in front of the class to
morrow. Maybe this wasn’t such a good idea after all. She’d never spoken to a whole group of kids.
“You’ll do great,” Yvonne said as they walked home from school.
Eddie had persuaded Mama to let him walk all the way home, so he limped on his crutches beside Kenny. “Are you going to vote for Laura?” he asked. “I would if I were in her class.”
Kenny looked sideways at Laura and didn’t commit himself. “Our class would be the only one with a girl president.”
“We may be the only class with a president. Eddie’s class isn’t electing one,” Laura said.
“Not yet,” Yvonne said. “But I asked Miss Burch if we were going to, and she said it might be a good idea.”
At the hotel, Kenny waved good-bye and walked on home, but Yvonne climbed the stairs and called her mom to see if she could stay awhile to work on Laura’s campaign banner. Mama let Laura get a sheet before she took over office duties.
The girls were cutting out letters in the lobby when the postman came. Eddie sorted the mail.
“You got a letter from Bruce,” he said.
Laura put down her scissors and scurried to the desk. “I did? Just me?” Usually Bruce’s letters were addressed to the entire family. Only once had she received one addressed specifically to her. It had been a thank-you letter because she had sent him a bookmark she’d made in Sunday school. In carefully scrolled letters, she’d written a portion of the Twenty-third Psalm—the part about walking in the valley of the shadow of death but fearing no evil because God was with him. Bruce was as big a hero in her eyes as her father, but she was afraid for him, and she didn’t want him to be afraid.
Eddie handed her the letter and continued sticking letters in boxes.
Laura carefully opened it and scanned the contents. “He’s using the code!” she exclaimed. “He wants a piece of pie. I think that means France. Eddie, can you get the code sheet from the drawer?” He gave it to her, and she matched words and phrases. “He’s written down what he wants for his first meal home. Translation: He was in Italy, then England, then in the D-Day invasion, and now he’s in France.”
The postmark was a month earlier, but Allied troops were still pushing across Europe toward Germany, so Bruce was exactly where Dad had suspected. Knowing for sure made Laura feel closer to Bruce. She wondered where in France and decided her next letter would have code words for the big towns so she could pinpoint his exact location.
At supper that night, Laura shared the news from Bruce’s letter. She also talked about her speech and showed off her banner, which read LAURA EDWARDS FOR PRESIDENT! Her sister Margie said her banner was great and then gave her some pointers on how to speak to the class. Still, Laura had sweaty palms when it was speech time the next day.
“Ladies first,” Mrs. Jamison said. Laura hid a frown. Margie had told her to focus on how the candidates would organize and run the stamp drive instead of the boy-girl issue.
Laura walked to the front of the room and began. “My friends and classmates, I would be a good president because I’ve had experience organizing things. Over the summer I had a real job. I ran a hotel office during the afternoons.” She listed her responsibilities. “I would use those skills to organize the war-stamp drives. My brother Bruce is in the army, and I work very hard on the home front to keep him safe. Please vote for me.”
The class applauded. Next, Jay spoke. He said he wanted to be president and would appreciate everyone voting for him.
Keith mentioned the importance of war-stamp sales in his speech.
“Any questions?” Mrs. Jamison asked. Laura was prepared for some, but no one raised a hand. “Tomorrow morning we’ll have the election. It’ll be by secret ballot, just like real elections, so no one will know how you voted. We’ll count the ballots in class.”
On the playground, when the teacher had walked back into the school, Keith sidled up to Laura. “Isn’t your big hotel job in that place where the Japs lived?” He didn’t wait for an answer before he said in a loud voice so other kids could hear, “She’s running a Jap hotel!”
Laura was momentarily dumbstruck. Sure, the Wakamutsus were of Japanese ancestry, but they weren’t the Japanese the United States was fighting.
“Those tenants came here before the war,” she said. “They’re on the American side.”
“Sure they are,” Keith said. “That’s why the government locked them up.”
Laura had no reply to that, but she asked Mama that afternoon when she was taking over the office.
“The Wakamutsus should never have been sent to the relocation center. Most of the Japanese would have become American citizens if they were allowed to. Sachiko, Minoru, and Kiyoshi are Americans, born right here in Seattle.”
“Then why were they locked up?” Laura said.
“I can’t explain that. I think it was a big mistake made by people who are afraid of someone who looks different.”
Laura nodded but didn’t really understand.
The next morning at school, Laura hung her banner at the front of the room. Neither one of the other candidates had made a sign.
“Are there any questions for the candidates before we vote?” Mrs. Jamison asked. She wrote the three names on the blackboard, and each student voted for one on a small piece of paper. Laura voted for herself. Dad had said if she didn’t have the confidence in her ability to lead, then she shouldn’t be a candidate.
Mrs. Jamison carried a large jar down the aisles, and students dropped their ballots in it. She carefully mixed them up as if for a drawing, then she pulled one out at a time and read the name. With each name drawn, she put a tally mark by that candidate’s name on the blackboard.
Laura held her breath as each name was read. She had won before the last few names were drawn. Of the thirty-two votes in her class, she already had eighteen before the final votes were read. That was more than half the class. Jay ended up with seven, Keith had four, and Laura had twenty-one votes.
“Madam President, would you take over the meeting of the class?” Mrs. Jamison asked.
Laura walked carefully to the front of the room. Her heart felt as if it would burst inside her, and happiness washed over her. She had actually won—and by a landslide. What a feeling!
She and Yvonne had planned what she would say if she won or lost. Now she tried to remember. She should have brought her notes to the front with her.
“Thank you for electing me president. I’ll do my best to do a good job. The first thing I’d like our class to do is make a banner for our room. We can use this sheet for the backing.” She pointed to her campaign banner. “Would each one of you draw something that represents you or anything about you and sign it? We’ll put the drawings on the banner.”
“That’s a fine idea, Laura,” Mrs. Jamison said. She turned to the class. “Why don’t you think about what you will draw, and after arithmetic and reading, we’ll make the banner.”
At recess, Laura ran outside and told the others of her big win. “We’re making the banner, just like we planned,” Laura told Yvonne. It had actually been Margie’s idea. She said it would unite the class, and Yvonne and Laura thought it was a wonderful plan.
When Mrs. Jamison let them draw their objects for the banner, Laura drew a picture of the office at the hotel. She’d based her campaign on her experience there, so she thought it was fitting. Jay drew a bicycle, since he rode everywhere. Keith drew a face with slanted eyes and big buck teeth, like in a newspaper cartoon, and then made a big X over it to show that the Japanese should be eliminated. Another student drew an airplane dropping bombs because his brother was a pilot. Still another drawing was of the American flag.
Each student pinned a drawing on the sheet until everyone was represented. Some of the drawings were not war-related. A teddy bear, a baseball bat, a birthday cake, and a kickball found places on the banner.
Before they left school, Laura and Kenny hung the banner above the door. Laura couldn’t wait for next week’s class meeting, when t
he war stamps would be sold.
Eddie’s class was also going to hold an election. Laura urged him to run for president.
“Do you think they’d elect a cripple?” he asked. That was the first time Laura had heard Eddie call himself that, and she hoped it was the last time.
“You have one weak leg,” she said. “And it’s getting better.” She’d been helping him with exercises to strengthen it. Again they used the hotel hallways as practice areas, and he’d lengthened his walk each day. “I didn’t think it would work again, but you’ve forced it to. You may have to wear the brace, but you won’t need crutches much longer.”
“But I’ll always have a limp.”
“What about President Roosevelt? He had polio, and he’s the leader of our country. And I think he’ll be elected again. Who could beat him?” She’d heard Dad say that just the night before.
With a little more persuasion, Eddie was convinced to run. Laura declared herself his campaign manager. Since he was helping in the office after school, he could use that job as a qualification in his speech. Yvonne and Kenny helped them make a banner that read VOTE FOR EDDIE.
On the day of his class campaign speeches, Eddie walked to the front of his classroom without his crutches. Laura wished she’d been there to see him, but Yvonne filled her in on every detail. When it was time for questions, Yvonne stood up and talked about how Eddie had worked hard to overcome polio and that he was a determined boy who would work hard for their class. Everyone applauded when she sat down.
The vote was between Eddie and one other boy, and although it was a close race, Eddie was elected president.
“The Edwards siblings,” Laura said at recess when she’d been told of Eddie’s victory. “What a team!”
American Triumph: 1939-1945: 4 STORIES IN 1 Page 37