34. GREAT FALLS

Dick tells me you are tucked away in the pest house. The Gramp

In the fall of 1942, Richard Worstell and his family rented a three-story house with a basement at 920 Third Avenue North in Great Falls, Montana. The family lived on the first floor and the bedrooms on the upper floors were rented to single men, as was a room in the basement. The front room or parlor was separated from the living room by double doors and was the bedroom for Richard, Wilda, and Cameron. The family did not bring the iron hospital beds with them and purchased a new blond art deco bedroom suite. There was a narrow glassed-in porch on the east side of the house accessed through the dining room, which was Ann Jean’s sleeping room. The upstairs bedroom furniture came with the house. It was their first home in Montana that did not have a kitchen range but a gas stove instead.

It was an opportune time for the family to get into the rental business. The civilian airport on Gore Hill became a military installation and an Air Force base was under construction east of the city. Known as East Base, the name of the Air Force base was later changed to Malmstrom Air Force Base. The labor force at Anaconda, military, and construction workers made housing a premium. Just as important for the operators of the rooming houses was the fact that the custom in those days was for young men to share beds or bedrooms in rooming houses and eat in boarding houses or restaurants. It was Wilda’s job to make the beds daily, change and launder the sheets weekly, and clean and tidy the rooms. Dick purchased a mangle, an electric ironer, to ease the job of ironing sheets, as it was the practice to iron sheets by hand or have them done in the laundry when you rented rooms. Actually, many people ironed their own sheets in those days before “perma press” fabrics, or at the very least the top edge. Line-hung sheets, dried out-of-doors, got most of their wrinkles flapped out of them.

Some of the bachelor renters were young and good looking and would stop by to visit with the Worstells. One was a young man who liked to play the piano; another had a small accordion that he played. An older gentleman, who was a long-time resident of the basement room, often stopped by to visit with the family in the kitchen. He loved to rail against the stale donuts in the average cafe, “You can throw them up against the wall, and they just bounce off. You know what I mean? You know what I mean?” A good number of these young men were drafted during that year.

Ann Jean had made an easy adjustment from a small school to a city high school. She joined the band and her grades improved. Then late in the fall, she caught a cold and the colder temperatures forced her to move her bed inside to the dining room. By Thanksgiving, there was infection to the inner ear. Dr. Gaylord Worstell was consulted and Dr. Hurd, a local eye, ear, nose, and throat specialist, was called and she was taken to the hospital. The doctor lanced the eardrum to allow the infection to drain and relieve the pain. However, Ann Jean continued to complain of an earache. Gaylord’s opinion was that the pain should be gone after the pressure was relieved. After consultation between the doctors, her parents were advised to watch for complaints of headache, or pain behind the ear. When that occurred, Ann Jean was taken to the hospital for a mastoid operation. Gaylord Worstell was allowed to be present in the operating room. On New Years Eve, Ann Jean was sent home to complete her recovery. She missed school from mid-November until to mid-January, having spent both Thanksgiving and Christmas in the hospital. Although she was not in school, she was not always sick and was able to do the homework assignments. Because of the ear problem, she was forced to drop band for the remainder of the year.

Gaylord Worstell, now 80 years old, was not yet through with the practice of medicine. Dr. Robinson, Fern’s husband, was in the military and stationed at Mountain Home Air Force Base, Idaho. Fern and the children, Jane and Tom, went to live in Big Sandy. At least part of the time they lived in the hospital with Gaylord. When the active six and two year olds got to be too rambunctious, he pulled them up to attention by the ears, making a lasting impression upon Jane. During the time there, Jane contracted meningitis. Dr. Worstell had treated meningitis patients before and watched them die in his arms. Jane remembers being able to keep her eyes open only a slit and that she had to hold her head back in order to see out. She remembers hearing Gramp say that once her eyes closed the brain would be gone. With Jane, he was able to use the new sulfa drugs, and to oversee her recovery. It was his first use of the drug and it was a wonderful experience to be able to use it to save her life. Even after sulfa drugs and antibiotics, meningitis continues to take its toll. Several years later, Jane Robinson added her name to the list of family women who taught in a country school near Big Sandy; she taught a summer term there in the late 1940s.

Rachel Jane (Harnden) Mauerhan, the eldest of Gaylord’s grandchildren, served in the military during the war. When Gaylord visited the Mauerhans in California in 1939, Jane was a graduate of the University of Southern California. She worked as an advertising copywriter in San Francisco, and was in the Ambulance Corps, which was meeting in the Ferry Building. Then in 1942 she joined the WAAC. Special Orders Number 51 from Headquarters Women’s Army Auxiliary Corps Training Center, at Ft. Des Moines, Iowa, dated August 29, 1942 reads as follows:

This was the first class of officers in the corps. After a year, the corps went from being an auxiliary corps to being a part of the army, the Women’s Army Corps (WAC). Jane Mauerhan had good family support while she was stationed in Des Moines. Emerson’s daughter, Miriam, and her husband were living in Des Moines and invited her for dinners. When Mauerhan’s Great-Aunt Mary Carnes and daughter Corabelle visited Miriam in Des Moines they saw Mauerhan as well, and all four women took a trip to Kansas City to visit Great-Aunt Jane Bradford.

Jane was in command of the initial WAC contingent sent to England. She was assigned to an intelligence office in London where she received, sorted, and forwarded intelligence reports. The blitz to conquer England in the Battle of Britain was over, but Germany continued bombing raids into 1944. Jane interviewed captured women WAC and intelligence counterparts. She knew of the death camps and hoped to receive confirmation from those she interviewed. Instead she learned of the horrors of Dresden.

Shortly after D-Day, Jane was told to report for transportation to France. She was not allowed to go to her quarters first, so could take only what she was wearing and had with her. This was the first group of WACs to land in Normandy. Jane spent the first night in the open in light clothes. At first light when she could see through the fog, she saw a fire and walked across a field to it. The men attending the fire were startled to see a woman walking toward them out of the fog. Jane had crossed a minefield. During the Battle of the Bulge, the officer WACs were sent into the tent hospitals to help with the wounded. Jane went on to serve two years in the Intelligence unit in Europe. The following quotation and picture are from the cover of Electronics in the West by Jane Morgan:

sister] took sick and died and then he heard you were in the hospital.”

Richard got the household goods moved into their new home at 315 Second Avenue North. He had purchased the former home of a well-known retired dentist by the name of Dr. W. F. Guy. Dr. Guy purchased the house in 1926 from Shirley S. Ford, who built the home in 1907. When sold to the Shrine Club four years later, it was described as “one of the finer homes of the city.” The 300 block had become commercial in nature, with the old brick library on the west and a garage and car dealership on the east. Richard purchased it with all the furnishings included. It was a good home, with a partially screened porch across the front and balcony above. The front door opened into a double living room extending across the front of the house, only slightly divided in the middle. The east end had a fireplace with a painting of Square Butte above; the west end could be used for formal dining, but was also furnished with davenport and chairs for living space. The room behind the fireplace was designed to be the formal dining room but became the bedroom for Dick, Wilda, and Cameron. The kitchen was behind the other end of the living room. The renters came in the front door and crossed the living room to the stairs. There were three large bedrooms and bath upstairs, a bedroom and private bath behind the kitchen, originally designed for live-in help, and two or three bedrooms in the basement, all rented out to single men. During mild weather, the front porch was Ann Jean’s sleeping space. Accommodations for indoor sleeping were made during the winter months, and by her senior year she had a room of her own up-stairs.

When Ann Jean was released from the detention hospital, the first order of business was to spend the $50 award money. Newspaper ads made it easy: one for a used wood Conn clarinet, another for a second-hand bicycle. The fifty dollars covered both.