Two London-born sisters survived the World War II bombing onslaught known as the Blitz. The husband of one of them bombed Germany.
A mathematician worked on the atomic bomb, then helped launch the computer age. A Marine helped integrate the University of Mississippi.
They are among people who have lived in the Fairway Village neighborhood over the past few years. As we reported Sunday, a portion of the 55-and-older community is part of Clark County’s oldest census bloc, with a median age of 72.6.
They have lived through some historic times, and several have shared their experiences with reporters.
Recently, 100-year-old Navy veteran Jim Christian described serving on a cargo ship during the battle for Guadalcanal. When a Japanese force traded fire with U.S. warships, they were “close enough to see the gun flashes,” he said. “I thought of my .50-caliber machine gun against their 8- and 10-inch guns.”
Harry Van Sandt also served in the Pacific. He learned to type in high school, so Van Sandt was assigned to the ship’s office.
“I made up the work parties. My name never got on them,” Van Sandt told The Columbian a few years ago.
The Greenberg girls, now Rita Stewart and Roma Ekstrom, grew up in London’s East End, near docks that were prime German targets. They were evacuated to countryside towns outside London. They didn’t get a warm welcome, Stewart said. Local kids kept telling the newcomers that their mothers and fathers were going to get killed by the Germans.
The girls went home when the Blitz stopped, but Germany unleashed rocket attacks in 1944. One blew the roof off their house.
“We lived in the basement,” Stewart said. “There was a big wooden table with mattresses underneath where we would sleep.”
Meanwhile, her future husband, Larry Stewart, flew 31 missions as the navigator on a B-24 bomber. Stewart, who died in 2017, said he wasn’t concerned about getting their B-24 Liberator to the target; they just followed the lead aircraft. His job was to get them home.
‘I’m your mother!’
Phyllis Cady Johnson worked on the top-secret Manhattan Project in Oak Ridge, Tenn., and helped develop the atomic bomb. Johnson died in 2010, but family and friends shared her story, including some mother-daughter dynamics.
When she came back to Camas for what was supposed to be a weeklong visit, she was pressured to explain what she’d been doing in Tennessee.
“Our mother kept pestering her,” Jim Johnson, her brother, said.
“She’d say, ‘I’m your mother! You can tell me anything!’ She wouldn’t let up, and Phyllis left after three days.”
She worked in Oak Ridge after the war during the dawn of the computer era.
Jim Mewhirter was a Marine helicopter pilot in 1962, when James Meredith became the first black student to attend the University of Mississippi. It required federal intervention.
“There were 100 Marine helicopters and 100 Army helicopters there,” Mewhirter said.
Later, Mewhirter talked with a crew chief from an Alabama-based squadron.
“When they got back to Birmingham, people wouldn’t even feed them.”
Off Beat lets members of The Columbian news team step back from our newspaper beats to write the story behind the story, fill in the story or just tell a story.
