You never know what Grandma might say!

Well, there are a lot of reasons why we never know what Grandma might say, but Grandma Avis threw all of us for a surprise over Christmas this year.

We are taking her home after the festivities and randomly she shares that she and her sister Iris made bombs during WWII for about 6 weeks. It sounds like Iris was in the “powder room” and Grandma Avis was responsible for making sure the shells were in place and tightening something (she couldn’t remember what it was for sure).

Can you believe that none of us had heard this story before this point? It seems that until she was 99 years old Grandma didn’t think this was important enough to share…

I did some searching later during the holiday and while Grandma can’t remember for sure what city they worked in there were four Nebraska Cities that manufactured and stored ammunition. Mead, Hastings, Grand Island and Sidney.  At some point we will have to ask Grandma again if any of those sound familiar to her and maybe there are employment records or something for the facilities. 

While doing some searching on this topic, I also realized (or maybe I had known before and forgotten?) that the Enola Gay airplane was actually manufactured in Nebraska.  You never know what you might find or what a simple conversation with family may bring up.