Priscilla Richardson

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As you remember on Memorial Day the brave military who fought all our wars, also take a moment to remember the contributions of those who stayed home. Civilians at what they called the home front, mostly women, children and older folks, helped us win World War II. Virginia Bosserman Cronise, now 86, was in the thick of the Fincastle home front then. Her husband, the late Charles Cronise Jr., was serving in the Navy in the Pacific while she dealt with rationing of virtually every necessity of life.

"You had to have stamps to buy meat," Cronise said. For a while, she volunteered at the Ration Board, helping issue those stamps. You needed stamps for most everything else: shoes, clothing, sugar, rubber tires, gasoline -- the list goes on and on. Everyone had a victory garden, although Cronise's father had always had one, so "the war didn't make any difference." If you wanted to make preserves from your homegrown fruit, and needed sugar, "friends would share their stamps. People shared if they had any to share. Lots didn't have any to share," since the rations allowed little leeway.

"You had to save paper, including newspapers. We bundled it up," Cronise said. And empty tin cans, too. Any and everything for the war effort. Plus there were scarce items rarely available, such as canned salmon. And at night, to prevent enemy bombers from finding inhabited areas, there were blackouts. You had "to cover the windows so the lights would not show" outside. Cronise's father was one of the wardens who went around to check that everyone complied.

How did these civilians feel about all these restrictions on everyday life? "We just took it in stride. We knew we had to do it and we did it," Cronise said. "Our men were serving in the war and this was our way of serving on the home front while they fought battles."

Cronise's husband did fight battles during his hitch. He drove landing crafts that ferried fighting men from large ships to Philippine beaches nine different times. Once, while manning a gun during an attack on his ship, he responded quickly to a command to hit the deck. Luckily so, as a grenade exploded a few seconds later on the very spot where he had been. Thus, he lived to come home to his 22-month-old daughter whom he had not seen up to that point.

But this gets ahead of the story. Cronise grew up in Fincastle, experiencing a "wonderful" childhood. Children could play in the nearly empty unpaved streets, and she had lots of friends and cousins to play with. "We'd play tag, and hide-and-go-seek, and catch ball," Cronise said. Her two best friends, now deceased, Lady Slusser, daughter of the postmaster, and Mary Lynn Haden, daughter of the circuit court judge, lived nearby.

Cronise's father was the printer for the Fincastle Herald, and her mother wrote the addresses by hand on the papers before taking them to the post office each week. While Cronise waited for them to finish their chores, she'd get tired and want to sit outside on the steps. "A man who worked at the restaurant next door would give me an ice cream or a bottle of pop." Cronise thinks maybe he felt sorry for her.

As an only child, she was certainly not spoiled rotten. "Nobody asked me if I felt like going to Sunday school and church, we just went," Cronise said. "If I said I felt like staying home, my mother would say, 'You can stay home, but remember that if you're not well enough to go to church you're not well enough to play on Sunday afternoon.' "

But then Charles Cronise's family moved from Springwood into Fincastle, and they started to attend her church. "It was love at first sight" for each when she was 14 and he 15. Neither ever was interested in any other, and only last year did their marriage of 66½ years end with his death. A love story, truly.

So a hearty thanks to her and all the home front people, as well as to our military, on Memorial Day.