Editor’s note: This is another column in Bill Boyd’s new series, “The Way It Was,” about growing up in Marysville. Bill continues to work with the Union County Historical Society to obtain information for his stories.
–––
It started as a typical summer day in 1945. I was 13 years old, and I was sitting in the swing on our front porch petting a neighborhood dog named “Whiskers.” He actually belonged to the Wall family down the street, but he spent quite a bit of time at our house.
Then suddenly two cars came driving down Fifth Street with their horns honking. I thought there might have been a wedding and the wedding party was celebrating. But then I heard other horns from cars on Maple Street.
That’s when my mother came out the front door smiling as she told me that Japan had surrendered, and World War II was over. I don’t think I had ever seen my mother any happier than that. She had just heard the news on the radio.
Before I could react, the whistle at the Nestle milk plant started blowing again and again. At almost the same time, I heard the siren wail atop the fire station at the corner of Sixth and Main Streets. Within a few minutes I could hear car horns honking all over town.
When I looked down Fifth Street, I could see all the cars in the center of town. The streets were so crowded that the cars couldn’t move at all. There was no bypass around Marysville then, so all the highway traffic was stuck in Marysville. Semi trucks sat motionless as they blew their loud air horns. But it wasn’t just cars and trucks. There were even a few tractors that nearby farmers were driving.
So I jumped on my bike and headed east toward downtown. As I rode down the street, church bells began ringing. The streets and sidewalks were so crowded, I left my bike on the courthouse lawn. Then I ran to Butler’s restaurant, for I knew there would be a lot of celebrating there. Tony Butler had turned up the volume on his jukebox, and opened the front door. In no time at all, high school kids we’re dancing on the sidewalk to the music of Benny Goodman and the Dorsey Brothers.
A man named Fred Depp came pushing a cart down the street. It was loaded with confetti. The confetti was actually scraps from the paper punch press at the Marysville Tribune, and with the help of a few kids, the air was full of confetti.
Then I heard firecrackers. They had disappeared during the war, but someone must have saved a bunch of them. I think they were cherry bombs, the loudest of all firecrackers. And in only a minute or so, the air was full of the scent of exploded gun powder.
All the celebrating continued throughout the day, and into the evening. As we sat around our dining room table at dinner that night, we all had stories of what we saw and heard during the day.
As we talked, we saw our next-door neighbors, Clarence and Ella Hoopes, slowly walking among their flower beds, and my mother said “this has to be a bitter-sweet day for Clarence and Ella.” I told her I didn’t know what she meant by that.
She explained that they must be full of mixed emotions. They felt the same joy that we were feeling from the end of the war. But at the same time, they must have felt sorrow, for their son, Jack, had been killed in that war. He was an Army Air Corps intelligence officer and his plane crashed in the jungles of New Guinea.
Jack was about the same age as my sister, Betty, Maybe 12 years older than me. My parents often talked about what a great kid he was. He was a good student and a member of the MHS football and track teams. I just remember him as “the boy next door.”
It was VJ Day, August 15, 1945, a joyous day in Marysville and the nation. But it was a bitter-sweet day for our next door neighbors and others who lost loved ones in that war.
Those wishing to contact Bill Boyd can e-mail him at williamboyd514@gmail.com