Existing comment:
"I worked 7 days per week, 12 hours per day, 65 cents per hour."
-- Stewart McNutt, Dravo Wilmington Boat yard worker
The Dravo Wilmington boatyard workers were heroes on the home front. At one point, they delivered five LSMs in a 16-day period -- an average of one ship every 3.2 days. They met and often exceeded the ambitious production targets set by the Army and Navy in their "E for Excellence" program. Stars were added to flags and pins (shown above) were awarded, as production soared.
When adversity and shortages, also came employment for women and minority workers in the wartime factories and shipyards of Wilmington.
Dravo workers found many ways to help their loved ones on the frontlines. Besides the rationing required by law, of everything from gasoline to butter, they gave blood, wrote letters, shared rides, took in boarders, and when asked to "Buy Bonds", they lined up to try for 100 percent participation.
"... I loved my job, which was a wonderful challenge... it was also very satisfying that I, Thelma Anderson, was personally contributing to the war effort... I was the first female crane operator on the East coast."
-- Thelma Anderson
"My best memories were the good people I worked with... The Brock's Lunch Truck would come and I'd get a box lunch for 25 cents -- a sandwich, fruit, a cookie and a small drink. One time there was this big girl from the South who smoked a corncob pipe... She was welding something overhead on the DE walking backward..> She fell off the DE onto a raft in the water! They had to get her up with one of the cranes. She was okay."
-- Albert L Nai
"... Before coming to Delaware and working for Dravo, I lived in Arkansas and worked on a farm... My husband, Cornell Parker, was a member of the 10th Cavalry during the war... He was a part of the Buffalo Soldiers."
-- Bertha L Parker
Their electrical shop coworkers chose Emma Maccari, second from left, and Mabel Lanyon, with a bouquet, to represent them in the ceremony honoring Dravo women shipbuilders at the launch of a Navy gate vessel on May 5, 1943. The Wilmington Morning News reported "Miss Lanyon swung her bottle of champagne, and the ship slipped sideways into the Christina River." |