Women's war work: the Aid Society of 1861, the Red Cross workrooms, and Elizabeth Richardson

1861 – 1945

The town's first charity was a women's war society: in April 1861, as the Civil War opened, Mishawaka's women organized the Soldiers' Aid Society — in De Kever's account the town's first named charitable organization of any kind. The women's record and the charitable record of Mishawaka begin at the same line, and the Charities section carries the society there; it stands here as the first entry in the women's own record, three decades before the town had a hospital, a public library, or a woman in any office.

The First World War: the Mishawaka chapter of the Red Cross was the women's wartime instrument in 1917–18, and the work was workroom work: women volunteered making surgical dressings and clothing, and packed the Christmas boxes the chapter sent to soldiers. In October 1918 the chapter's standing was put in its own words, carried in this build's Wars section: "the Mishawaka chapter will again be a 100 percent chapter." The county registration of women for war work — 27,575 St. Joseph County women enrolled by the Woman's Committee of the Council of National Defense, 2,713 of them at work in South Bend factories — is a county frame in which Mishawaka's share is not separated in any record reached, and it is not divided here by guess; the gap is named in the suffrage entry above as well, because the same county frame governs both. The negative of the honor roll prints at its true size: the Gold Star Honor Roll of 1921 names no woman among Mishawaka's twelve dead of the First World War — the volume itself carries fifteen Indiana women among the state's dead — so the absence is Mishawaka's, in a record that did name women elsewhere.

The Second World War, and the one named servicewoman: the Mishawaka Red Cross chapter worked again in 1941–45, training nurse's aides and gathering supplies. Of Mishawaka women in uniform, the record reached names one whole. Elizabeth "Liz" Richardson was born 8 June 1918 at Akron, Ohio, raised in Mishawaka, and graduated from Mishawaka High School; she attended Milwaukee-Downer College from 1936 to 1940 and went into American Red Cross Clubmobile service, rising to captain of her unit. She served in England and then, from 1944, in France, and was posted to Le Havre in February 1945. On 25 July 1945, aged twenty-seven, she was killed in the crash of an L-4 Grasshopper in fog near Rouen; the pilot, Sergeant William R. Miller, was killed with her. She lies in the Normandy American Cemetery, one of only four women in that ground. Her letters and diary, kept through her service, became the basis of James H. Madison's Slinging Doughnuts for the Boys (Indiana University Press, 2007), and the National Archives' Prologue carried her story in the fall of 2007. Her full record stands in this build's People section; she stands here as the named center of the women's war record. One conflict in her record prints whole: her college's successor institution, Lawrence University, dates her joining the Red Cross to May 1944, where the standard biography gives July 1944; neither is harmonized here. And the wider negative stands as a statement about the record reached: no Mishawaka servicewoman or Army nurse beyond Richardson is named in any Second World War roll this build has read; the settling sources are the Indiana Archives' service cards, the county veterans index's women's entries, and the public library's service files.

Sources:

1. De Kever, commissioned history of Mishawaka — the Soldiers' Aid Society of April 1861 as the town's first named charitable organization; the Red Cross workrooms, dressings, clothing, and Christmas boxes of 1917–18; the chapter's nurse's-aide training and supply work of the Second World War.
2. This build's Wars section — the Mishawaka Red Cross chapter's October 1918 statement; the Woman's Committee registration of 27,575 county women, Mishawaka's share not separated; the Gold Star Honor Roll of 1921 and its twelve Mishawaka names, none a woman, against fifteen Indiana women carried in the same volume.
3. James H. Madison, Slinging Doughnuts for the Boys: An American Red Cross Girl in World War II (Indiana University Press, 2007), from Richardson's letters and diary; National Archives, Prologue, Fall 2007; Lawrence University, Milwaukee-Downer successor — the joining date of May 1944, against the standard biography's July 1944; Richardson's whole record stands in this build's People section.