About this blog

My great Aunt Laura kept a scrapbook during her years of service in the USO. The scrapbook is falling apart and I've decided that the best way to perserve it is to scan the book item by item and post the images here. I'll most likely destroy the scrapbook in the process, but at least the images will live on.

Friday, March 1, 2013

Miss Wilson Made Valentine Queen

date and source unknown

"Against a Valentine background of immense red hearts on paper lace, the formal USO sweetheart ball was held Wednesday night in the USO ballroom, with about 500 soldiers and 154 GSO volunteers present. A half moon of white crepe paper with "Be My Valentine" lettered in red satin set off Sgt. Frederick Lambert's eight-piece ORD orchestra which furnished the music, and two entwined hearts high above the curtain repeated the Valentine motif.

Mrs. Miriam Wilson, 2419 Walker Ave, a student at Women's college, was chosen queen by the assembled GIs who dropped their votes into an old-fashioned Valentine box. To determine the queen's escort, the soldiers drew hearts. Bursting through a huge valentine placed on one side of the stage, the queen took her place, with her escort, on a throne, where a spotlight played on the red satin-crowned couple. Erie Stapleton, director of the USO, crowned the queen. After crowning, the GSO board and the GSO dance committee came through the stage valentine, forming a large "V" in front to the music of "Sweethearts."

All decorations were planned out and carried out by the GSO new dance committee as its initial feature which proved to be praiseworthy. Included in the committee are the Misses Dorothy Inabinet, Zell Craven, Betty Van, Tonnie Covington, Myrtle McCormick, and Virginia Stoffer. The GSO board included Misses Lorena Holden, president; Dorothy Sherwin, vice president; Mary Martin Lindsay, secretary; and Sue Hall, editor of "Rebel Yell" the monthly GSO paper. Zone chairmen are Misses Margaret Adams, Charline Hall, Lena Mae Smith, Clara Painter and Frances Irving."


So Mrs. Miriam Wilson lived at 2419 Walker Ave. That kind of information would never be printed in a newspaper article like that today. Times have changed indeed. 

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