One of the great joys of working in our profession is we get access to first-person accounts of our country’s and communities’ history. I’d like to share with you a perspective written by Alva Wellington, an Ecumen customer who lives in St. Peter, Minnesota.Thanks, Alva, for your post at Changing Aging and taking us back to the day that President Franklin Delano Roosevelt said ‘will live in infamy.’

Sunday, December 7, 1941 was a beautiful day in San Pedro, California so we decided to go to Los Angeles to an organ concert. We were a new bride and groom and my husband was just beginning his job as a Lutheran pastor in San Pedro. The concert was inspiring but its beauty was suddenly shattered with the news of the bombing of Pearl Harbor. We all left Los Angeles wonderingwhat was going to happen next. But it wasn’t long before we realized theseriousness of this news . When we came to the outskirts of San Pedro, the road was barricaded and all drivers stopped. No one was allowed into the city except those who lived there. We told the police that we lived there but they questioned us because we still had Minnesota license plates on thecar and no other identification. My husband said he had a church service here to conduct this evening. But this didn’t impress the police either. Then I found a letter from my mother with our address on it. This finally convinced the police that we really did live in San Pedro so he let us go by the barricade and to our home.It is rather interesting that the city could get prepared so quickly. But they were fearful that San Pedro might be on the list to be bombed also. So barricades, barrage balloons and blacked out windows were put into place . We lived with ration books, siren warnings, and trying to drive home at night without using any lights. That was hazardous. Many times we walkedhome in the dark and interestingly, as we walked, we could hear people talking on their porches but only in whispers.My husband’s regular church job changed from the traditional. He was busy saying good bye to men who immediately signed up for the armed services or comforting families when blue stars in the windows were changed to gold when someone was killed.But this was a time when everyone did their part to win the war. Women became part of the workforce too, either in the factories, ship yards or in banks, schools or business because the men were gone. No one complained. We all did what we could for the war effort- even something as small as saving bacon greece or gum wrappers.