Gloria Nash Holder was a typical teenager in the early 1940s. She loved music and loved to dance. She was popular with the young men of Mountain View and there was no shortage of dance partners in high school.
Gloria’s love of music was shared by her entire family. She took piano lessons and sang in church and school choirs. She could play the piano by ear. Her mother played the piano and both parents loved opera. “The house was always full of music,” she says. “There was a song in her heart every day,” says her son John.
As a cheerleader, Gloria traveled by bus with the football team. She graduated from Hapeville High School in 1943.
Now a sprite 97, Gloria has near total recall about her life’s key moments and remembers unincorporated Mountain View as “a wonderful place to live and very safe.”
In September 1939 the Germans invaded Poland and the world changed. The war lasted until September 1945.
Many of the boys Gloria had grown up with went off to war after high school. They joined the Army, the U.S. Air Corps and the Navy. The country went on war footing. Life was transformed for everyone, even those back home. Young girls of marrying age were particularly affected.
Now Gloria lives in Roswell. She talks about the ways young women contributed during the war years. “Letters were the social media of those days,” she says. “They became a lifeline for so many young people. I corresponded with soldiers and I know it meant a lot to them.” She has preserved a large collection of the letters and says that after the war some soldiers wrote to thank her for having kept them in touch with home.
Like many young women at the time, Gloria wanted to contribute and to save money for college. This was the time of Rosie the Riveter, a communications program launched by the U.S. Government to encourage young women to take jobs to…
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