Editor’s Note: This is the second in a series by Grace College students on local veterans. The series is in conjunction with the Old Jail Museum’s D-Day exhibit.
Esther Nelson, 98, of Grace Village in Winona Lake is one of the individuals who toiled behind the scenes during World War II to support the war effort.
While many people associate “war hero” with the veterans who served, unsung heroes such as Nelson often go overlooked.
One of Nelson’s jobs during the war involved canning tomatoes in Akron during the spring tomato season.
“There weren’t many of us to do the job,” said Nelson, whose brother Robert Duglay served in Italy and northern Africa as a bombardier in the Air Force, “because most of the other women were at the munition plants; that was where the real money was in those days.”
When not tomato farming, Nelson spent many hours tending the poultry farm she and her husband Frank operated. Frank was unable to serve overseas because of health restrictions. The couple’s Palestine farm primarily contributed eggs for the war effort.
“I spent hours out in the fields on the tractor scattering feed for the chickens,” Nelson said.
She said that they would normally hire people for that kind of job, but they were unable to because “everyone in Warsaw was working at the munitions plants, serving overseas or had their own businesses to manage.”
Nelson and other homefront workers had to sacrifice many of the simple things they had always taken for granted.
“We had coupons for sugar and shoes, among other things, that rationed how much we could buy at a time,” Nelson said. “Of course, there was always the black market if we wanted extra, but I tried to stay away from that kind of thing.”
Cloth was also a precious commodity at the time, so Nelson and the other homefront workers often made garments out of printed feed sacks.
Nelson was one of many whose sacrifices and hard work made victory in World War II possible.
