Here’s another page from the booklet that the Miller Brother Company department store in Chattanooga, Tennessee gave new WACs who were in basic training at nearby Fort Oglethorpe.
Homesick young WAC enlistees probably bought lots of photos to send to family and friends. I bet they wanted everyone back home to see how lovely they looked in their uniforms, and with their haircuts for new Wartime careers.
But, did Aunt Marian visit the Portrait Studio? She was 45-years old and her parents were gone.
I’m still enjoying looking at the booklet that the Miller Brothers Company department store in Chattanooga, Tennessee gave new WACs who were in basic training at nearby Fort Oglethorpe.
I love this page advertising their beauty shop. I wonder if Aunt Marian got a new hair cut for her new career.
Among the items of Aunt Marian’s that I found in my parent’s attic was a small booklet published by the Miller Brothers Company department store in Chattanooga. The booklet apparently was given to new WACs who were in basic training at nearby Fort Oglethorpe. It describes the store and the general area, and includes some blank pages at the back.
I was amazed that the first few pages of this book don’t describe the various departments in the store, but rather focus on personal shoppers, a mailing room (the women must have wanted to mail gifts home to family and friends), and food.
There are more pages–I’ll share a few of them in future posts.
The store no longer exists, but the building was so awesome that today it is on the National Register of Historic Places.
As I sort through Aunt Marian’s memorabilia and artifacts, I keep asking myself, “Why did she join the Women’s Army Corps (WACs)?”
Good grief, Aunt Marian was in her 40s—and had lived her entire life in rural central Pennsylvania. She lived with her parents and helped on the farm until her father died in 1943.
Aunt Marian had 8 living brothers and sisters when her father died, so she probably needed to find another home and job.
She was a woman with an 8th grade education—and it seems like the typical jobs for a middle-aged woman with her background would have been working in a factory or as a store clerk. But it was the middle of World War II—and recruiting ads like this this one may have motivated her to enlist.
Marian Solomon's midlife transition from the farm to the Women's Army Corps (WACs)
My Aunt the WAC 