GI Brides: The Wartime Girls Who Crossed the Atlantic for Love
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Margaret and Patrick made the most of their glamorous life in Geneva, where he worked his way up to Assistant Director-General, Treasurer and Financial Comptroller of the ILO, the highest non-elected position in the organisation. He was even honoured by the Queen with a CMG. Margaret felt great pride in her husband’s achievements, and threw herself into the role of the perfect wife and hostess, organising sumptuous dinner parties and mixing with the great and the good.
She never lied about who the father of her children was, but when people assumed that the three girls were Patrick’s she didn’t choose to correct them either. As far as she was concerned, he was more of a father to them than Lawrence had ever been. In the years after her first husband returned to America, he made no attempt to contact them or offer any kind of support.
Margaret and Patrick tried for children of their own, but without success. ‘I’m so grateful to you,’ he told her eventually. ‘You’ve brought me a family I might otherwise never have had.’
But despite her happiness with Patrick, life wasn’t always easy for Margaret. After several years in Switzerland, where she and her husband made the most of the skiing and beautiful mountain walks, she developed multiple sclerosis. It began with a trembling in her hands, but soon she was completely bedbound. She recovered well enough to walk with a pair of sticks, but then the disease came back. After three years of intermittent attacks it burned itself out, but Margaret was left in a wheelchair for the rest of her life.
Never one to let misfortune get the better of her, Margaret was determined to make the most of her life. She began teaching English report-writing skills to officials at the ILO and the United Nations, and wrote the organisations’ official booklet on the subject. She also took a course in freelance journalism and was soon writing articles for the Times and the Guardian.
Although she tore all the photographs of Lawrence out of her family albums, Margaret stayed in touch with her former in-laws in America, in particular Lawrence’s sister Ellen. From her, Margaret learned the sorry details of her ex-husband’s later life – a repetitive cycle of achievement followed by catastrophe. He had worked in public relations for a Florida-based theme park, advised on a notoriously successful political smear campaign and even set up two successful magazines, Outboard and Underwater. But despite his various successes, his life would always unravel when he went back to the bottle. He had remarried in Panama City, and fathered a son and a daughter, but that marriage, too, had ended in divorce. In a drunken stupor he had wandered in front of a moving car, shattering the bones in his legs and leading to a long, miserable spell in a nursing home.
One day in 1974, Ellen wrote to tell Margaret that her brother had died. He had fallen from a moored-up boat on a Florida quayside and been dragged under by the mud. As Ellen put it, ‘His soul went up and his body went down.’ Whether he was drunk or sober at the time of the incident was a matter of dispute in the family.
In 1981 Patrick retired from his job at the ILO and he and Margaret returned to England, settling in Little Marlow, Buckinghamshire, in a beautiful single-storey house designed by his sister Elaine. At the age of seventy-five, Margaret fulfilled one of her life’s great ambitions, taking a degree in Humanities with the Open University and achieving first-class honours.
Patrick died suddenly of a stroke in 2001, leaving Margaret to spend her final years alone. Throughout her life with him, she had rarely spoken about her first marriage, and many outside the family didn’t even know that she had been a GI bride. But as time went on she grew more willing to share stories about her experiences in America.
Margaret died in January 2012, at the age of eighty-nine. With her at the end were her daughter Veronica and granddaughter Nuala – who promised Margaret that she would tell her story, along with those of the other brave women who crossed an ocean for the men they loved.
Acknowledgements
This book would not exist without our core interviewees – Margaret Denby, Sylvia O’Connor, Lyn Patrino and Rae Zurovcik – sharing their stories with us. We thank them, and their families, for their generosity and patience. Although we have tried to remain faithful to what they have told us, at a distance of seventy years many memories are incomplete, and where necessary we have used our own research, and our imaginations, to fill in the gaps.
Our research took us all over America, tracking down GI brides. In three months, we covered 12,984 miles in a rented Fiat 500, passing through thirty-eight states. Over sixty brides and their relatives were kind enough to speak to us: Itzy, Joy Beebe, Jane Bekhor, Elsie Blanton, June Blumenfeld, Jean Borst, Joyce Brown, Olga Brown, Mary Burkett, Doreen Burwell, Veronica Calvi, Dorothy Care, Lilah Contini, Pat Cracraft, Dorothy Cullins, Pamela Delleman, Phyllis Duerling, Catherine Fogarty, Thelma Fouts, Margie Franz, Doris Gallantine, Peggy Hamrick, Nancy Harrington, Eileen Harris, Doreen Heath, Bridget Henderson, Ivy Hettenhausen, Joyce Hinze, Daisy Hom, Joan James, Doreen Kamis, Betty Kranz, Doris Lindevig, Vera Long, Irene Maio, Elsie Mangan, Jessie McConnell, Dorothy McDaniel, Beryl McDonald, Edna McSpedden, Avril Meehan, Edna Mewton, Jean Mobley, Margaret Moody, Patricia Murphy, Ruth Murtaugh, Linda Myers, Alma Naff, Eileen O’Connor, Rodger O’Connor, Annie Olsen, Eileen Pample, Hilda Peters, Betty Phipps, Rena Popivchak, Michael T. Powers, Edith Reiss, Donna Richardson, Frances Ross, Joyce Russell, Vince Schoenstein, Agnes Sekel, Kathleen Smoker, Miriam Stage, Joy Stanley, Liberty Webb, Linda Webb, Barbara Werner, Grace Whitcomb, Alice White, Eileen Whitney and Avice Wilson. You can find their stories, as well as pictures and audio clips of Margaret, Rae, Lyn and Sylvia, at www.gibrides.com.
We are hugely grateful to the World War II War Brides Association, in particular Erin Craig, Diane Reddy and Michele Thomas, for all their help, and for the warm welcome we received at their 2012 reunion in Boston. Thanks also to Francine Thomas from the Daughters of the British Empire and Jean McKinney from the TBPA for putting us in touch with their members.
As we travelled around America we were aided by local historians Larry Evans, David Giffels, Walter Patton and Ralph F. Witt. Glenn Booker, Neil Bromley, Ivan Cutting, Valerie Jackson, Jamie Lewis and Jo Stanley offered valuable research advice. We are grateful to the staff at NARA College Park, the Montana Historical Society, the American Red Cross, the University of Georgia Library, the United Steelworkers Archive, the McKeesport Heritage Center, the Early County Historical Society, the Akron Public Library and the University of Akron Archive.
In America, we received support and kindness from friends old and new: Kelly Barrett, Michael Barrett, Barbara Beebe Jensen, Jane Bloemer, Lawrence Cowart, Jeanneen Anderson Cowart, Vivian Beebe Brown, Billy Cissel, Judith Cissel, Spike Cissel, Betsy Cissel Cosgrove, Melanie Cowart Collier, Gilly Furse, Dick Glendon, Annie Jones, Maria McCarthy, Lawrence Rambo III, Ellen Ross, Bruce Russell, Maureen Russell, Brooke Stearns and Daniel Walkowitz.
We are grateful to Becky Barry for her precise transcriptions, and to Clara Jones for research assistance. Thanks also to our agent Jon Elek, our editor Anna Valentine and our project editor Holly Kyte. For suggestions on the manuscript, we are indebted to Michèle Barrett, Nick Gill, Chris Rice and Jon Tillotson, as well as many of those already mentioned.
Photo Section
GIs outside the American Red Cross Washington Club, Curzon Street, London, 1942.
Photo by Toni Frissell.
Courtesy of the American Red Cross. All rights reserved in all countries.
American soldiers enjoy a dance with girls at a Red Cross Service Club in London, 1942.
Photo by Toni Frissell.
Courtesy of the American Red Cross. All rights reserved in all countries.
May 1945, New York, New York. Red Cross nurses aid bringing ashore the child of the English wife of an American army man as the Thomas H. Barry, with sixty-two war brides, nineteen with infants, docks in New York.
Courtesy of the American Red Cross. All rights reserved in all countries.
January 1946, Southampton, Eng
land. Red Cross worker Frances Van Der Meid carries the baby of a GI wife aboard the SS Argentina, which will take the wives to new homes in the United States.
Courtesy of the American Red Cross. All rights reserved in all countries.
British wives of American servicemen line the decks of the SS Argentina; the first all-nursery ship bringing war brides from England to their new home is ready to sail. They sang ‘God Bless America,’ but as the ship pulled out, called in unison, ‘but we’ll never forget England!’
Courtesy of the American Red Cross. All rights reserved in all countries.
While her infant daughter is cared for by a Red Cross worker, the English wife of an American corporal is checked through customs.
Courtesy of the American Red Cross. All rights reserved in all countries.
Red Cross lessons for brides on shopping in America.
Courtesy American Red Cross. All rights reserved in all countries.
American Red Cross workers look after war brides’ babies in the SS Argentina’s playroom, 1946.
Courtesy of the American Red Cross. All rights reserved in all countries.
Sylvia during the war.
Mr. and Mrs. Bradley, with Sylvia as a child.
Sylvia and Bob on their wedding day.
Bob O’Connor in America.
Sylvia’s son Barry.
The O’Connor house in Baltimore, today.
Sylvia (second right) and The Bluebell Branch.
Rae in her Auxiliary Territorial Service (ATS) uniform.
Rae’s mother.
Rae’s sister, Mary, in her Auxiliary Territorial Service (ATS) uniform.
Rae’s brothers, Vic and Bill.
Raymond and Rae.
The Wessel house in Hackett, Pennsylvania.
Rae (left) and sister-in-law Chi-Chi (middle).
Rae in 1953.
Margaret (front) with her sisters, Jane, Bridget, and Susannah, in Ireland.
Major Boyle, Margaret’s father.
Margaret at the European Theater of Operations, United States Army (ETOUSA) Headquarters.
Lawrence Rambo as a young man.
The Cowart home in Arlington, Georgia.
Margaret at the old Rambo home in Blakely, Georgia.
Margaret on the deck of the SS Argentina, with Rosamund and Maeve.
Margaret in Georgia with her sister-in-law Ellen Cowart (holding baby Rosamund).
Margaret with baby Veronica.
Lyn.
Lyn and Ben’s wedding.
Lyn at the beach in California after the war.
Lyn at the beach with her son John, Aunty Louise and Louise’s husband, Sid.
Lyn cooking in America.
Lyn and John.
Lyn and Ben later in life.
Lyn in 2013.
Author Nuala Calvi with Sylvia in 2012.
Margaret later in life.
Rae in her old ATS uniform.
The World War II War Brides Association reunion in 2013.
P.S. Insights, Interviews & More . . .*
About the authors
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Meet Duncan Barrett and Nuala Calvi
Following Margaret: Uncovering My Grandmother’s Story
About the book
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A Conversation with Duncan Barrett and Nuala Calvi
Read on
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Further Reading
About the authors
Meet Duncan Barrett and Nuala Calvi
DUNCAN BARRETT AND NUALA CALVI are the coauthors of the Sunday Times bestsellers The Sugar Girls and GI Brides. Duncan previously edited the pacifist WWI memoir The Reluctant Tommy and is currently writing Men of Letters, a book about the Post Office Rifles in WWI. Nuala also works as a journalist and has written for the BBC, CNN, the Guardian, the Times, the Independent, and the Daily Express.
Visit www.AuthorTracker.com for exclusive information on your favorite HarperCollins authors.
Following Margaret: Uncovering My Grandmother’s Story
by Nuala Calvi
GROWING UP, I always saw my grandparents as picture-perfect. Although my grandfather, Patrick, had retired from his high-flying job in Geneva, they both retained an air of success and glamour when I visited them at their home in the Buckinghamshire countryside. My grandmother was still beautiful, even in her old age, and she prided herself on being the last lady in England to starch her napkins.
My grandmother didn’t want to spoil this perfect image by letting people know about her disastrous first marriage, so she was happy to give the impression that Patrick was the father of her children. When my mother was a child and the family dentist told her, “Your teeth are just like your father’s,” she knew instinctively to nod and smile.
As we grew older, my sister and I gradually became aware that Patrick wasn’t our biological grandfather, but we too got the sense that the subject was best left alone, and we didn’t ask too many questions. Even when Patrick died, my grandmother begged my father not to mention in his eulogy the amazing thing he had done in bringing up three girls who weren’t his own.
But after Patrick’s death, my grandmother began opening up more about Lawrence. When I was researching my first book, The Sugar Girls, and interviewing lots of other old ladies, I began to wonder why I wasn’t recording her story too. I started interviewing her about her experience as a GI bride—but it wasn’t easy. She could be prickly, and telling me about the awful things that had happened to her was difficult. The things I learned about my real grandfather shocked me, and I felt furious with him for how he had treated her. But the time for secrecy had passed. “I’m an old woman now,” she declared. “I don’t care what anyone thinks!”
The interviews were curtailed in late 2011, when my grandmother was diagnosed with cancer, and hours before she died I made my promise to write a book about her one day. Months later, when my editor started asking me and my partner, Duncan, what our next book was going to be about, I knew exactly what to tell him. Soon we were on a plane to America.
As well as finding other war brides to write about, I wanted to retrace my grandmother’s journey. In New York I found the pier where the Mauritania had docked. I stood there, trying to imagine myself in my grandmother’s shoes—a very young woman with a baby, arriving in such a huge city, only to find that her husband hadn’t turned up to meet her. The story I had heard was starting to feel more real to me.
Next we travelled to Akron, Ohio, where Lawrence had worked for Goodyear. There, I was sad to see that the grand department stores my grandmother had described to me were all gone. It was impossible to find the summer house she had lived in, because it had no street address. All I had was the number of the rural delivery route it had been on, but the archivists at the local library found a 1940s postal map and we drove to the area, which was still quite remote. No wonder my grandmother had told me: “It’s hard for you to realize how totally and completely isolated I was. I was completely alone.”
A nurse at the local hospital pointed out the wing that had been the maternity ward in the 1940s, where my aunt Maeve had been born and where my grandmother had endured that agonizing labor, alone in her hospital bed. I found myself wishing that I could go back in time and hold her hand.
Although Lawrence had long since died, I felt curious about my long-lost American family and decided I wanted to track them down. But I felt nervous—how would they feel about my turning up, almost seventy years after my grandmother had taken the children and run away? I found a number online for Lawrence’s only surviving sister, Judy, by now in her nineties, and dialed it nervously. Judy’s daughter Betsy answered, and to my relief was pleased to hear from me and urged me to visit them in Florida. A few days later I was standing on Judy’s doorstep in Atlantic Beach, being hugged like one of the family. “Your grandmother was such a lovely lady,” Judy told me. “I am so sorry for what happened to her.”
Talking to the family, I realized they were under no illusions a
bout Lawrence’s alcoholism. Betsy showed me the space in the basement that was known as “Uncle Lawrence’s Room,” because he would come to live there when he was on a downward spiral. But I also discovered that Lawrence could be a generous person when he wasn’t in the grip of addiction. His nephew Spike took me out on a speedboat to see the amazing house my grandfather had built on the Intracoastal Waterway during the time when he was a successful boat magazine publisher, and I heard how Lawrence had spent hours bringing food and water to all the neighbors when the area had flooded.