Diary from 1945

[lyburnum]

I don't know if some of you know about this already, but I found this website:

http://www.dhdd.net/dorothy/1945/today.html

My name is Dave, and Dorothy (“Dot”) was my mother.

On these pages are entries from a diary she kept in 1945, at age 16-17, when she lived with her family in the Englewood neighborhood on the south side of Chicago.

1945 has the same calendar as the current year, 2007, and so each day's entry will be available here in “real-time” as the year progresses. A new day will be posted every day during the year 2007, until every day of the 1945 diary is online.

Accompanying Dorothy's words are recollections from her sister Louise (Sis). Louise wrote her remembrances in 2000-2001.

Where available or appropriate, I am including photos from the scrapbook Dot compiled during this time. I am also adding artwork or video clips I can locate that might enhance a particular day's diary entry.

I think it's really interesting having such a record of someone's life during that era.

 

[Decobelle]

That is a wonderful website! Thanks for posting.

 

[imoldfashioned]

Love this! Thanks so much for letting us know about this site. She was so pretty too (she added, on a superficial note).

 

[ShortClara]

Wow! I just read January and holy cow - missy had quite the social life! I don't think I had necked so many guys until my early 20s LOL. Guess I'm dull

 

[SamMarlowPI]

thats cool! i found my grandmothers authograph book from 1937, she was 15 and just about to move to California from Wisconsin and all of her friends signed it with hilarious, corny rhymes...it's a fantastic read...she even wrote a rhyme to herself...anyway, sorry to hijack the thread...just figured it fit...cheers

 

[Jack Armstrong]

After my father's death, my sister and I discovered, hidden away in a box in his closet, a diary he'd kept when he was 16 years old, in 1942. Taking a time-trip back to his home town and seeing it through the eyes of his 16-year-old self was quite an experience.

We later took a trip to Dad's home town (Mt. Carmel, PA) and looked at the house he'd lived in. Then, since he had kindly left us a map of his jogging route, we followed the trail, right past his girlfriend's house. We visited the theater where he'd worked as an usher (now a pizza parlor, alas, but still standing), then finished up the day with a visit to the cemetary where our grandparents are buried.

I transcribed the diary (which was in Dad's atrocious handwriting), added photographs and historical footnotes to explain the current-events references, then printed it. I made up bound copies for my sister, myself, my mother and Dad's surviving sister. Then I scanned the original pages, in case they should be lost or damaged over the years to come.

It was all fascinating, and made us all wonder why Dad had never shown that side of himself to us.

 

[pennycarrol]

What an amazing website !!! I love it! Thank you!!

 

[Steve]

What a cool find! I bought a diary on eBay once that started in 1938. It came from Graz, Austria, so until I can get it translated, all I have to go on is that it belonged to a young girl who was an amazing artist.

 

[carter]

Ladies' Hat Comic

This comic from the online diary is definitely for the Ladies of the Lounge.

 

[zaika]

what a fantastic link! thank you so much for sharing.