GLENWOOD HAD WW II GIRLS TOO

An iconic poster dominated the Greensboro community of Glenwood's landscape during WW II, entitled, GLENWOOD BOYS IN SERVICE.  This column offers equal opportunity recognition of a Glenwood girl.

POW WIDOW LOOKS OVER POSTER OF WW II
NEIGHBORS FROM GLENWOOD COMMUNITY

  

Helen Hayworth could have easily jumped to the conclusion she had picked the wrong G.I. for her beau.  Since platoon-sized groups of soldiers came and went from her Glenwood home for meals, parties, and fellowship, she had many to choose from. 

“Our house seemed to be a magnet for out-of-town soldiers.  My father would bring a carload of them home with him sometimes.  Many took their meals with us, but others  were happy just to sit around on the porch and talk,” Hayworth recalls. 

“They were all very nice.  The fact that my father was a Greensboro policeman may have had something to do with that.  My mother pampered them with food and attention.  She said, ‘I know someone would do the same for my boys.’  My brothers, Robert and Tommy served in World War II.”

While none of the soldiers who visited the Hayworth home passed Helen Hayworth’s  muster, one she met at a July 4^th parade did.  “He was from the north, but I really liked him.  He came back to Greensboro on several weekends to see me.  He promised to write after he went overseas. 

I was so terribly disappointed when I didn’t hear from him for months on end!”

The truth be known, Corporal Antonio (Tony) Sanginite, a Brooklyn, New York native, may have written his southern belle while in route overseas.  Unfortunately, outgoing mail went down with his ship.  It was torpedoed by Luftwaffe bombers three miles off the African Coast in November, 1942.  Hours later, it was torpedoed by a German submarine, after which the USS Leedstown (AP-73) went down in 10 minutes.

Sanginite swam ashore and fought as an infantryman.  His 39^th Infantry Regiment swept across North Africa until the Battle of the Kasserine Pass in February, 1943, where he was captured as a prisoner of war. 

Per Helen Hayworth, “Months after he promised to write, I finally heard from him – a solitary postcard notifying me he was a prisoner of war in Italy.  I couldn’t even write him back, there was no return address.” 

Meanwhile, Sanginite escaped from the POW Camp in Italy and rejoined U.S. forces, only to be captured again.  This time, he was imprisoned in Northern Germany.  This time, the war was over for him.

A SANGINITE GRANDSON SERVING AS ARMY OFFICER VISITED THE WW II GERMAN STALAG IN WHICH HIS GRANDFATHER WAS IMPRISONED AND BROUGHT THIS PAVER FROM THE RUINS FOR HIS GRANDMOTHER

For Helen Hayworth, it was another postcard – with no return address.

“Tony was liberated after VE-Day and came straight to Greensboro – he didn’t even go see his mother in New York.  When he knocked on the door of our house on Highland Avenue, I almost died! 

My sister had just married a returning veteran – they had a big church wedding.  I didn’t want a big wedding – I just wanted to marry Tony.  In less than a week, we had gone to York, South Carolina for our wedding.  It couldn’t have been better – the Justice of the Peace had a room all fixed up, a piano player, and everything!”

Tony Sanginite spent the rest of his life in Greensboro, working first as a mechanic and later with the post office.  Health ramifications, likely related to his POW experiences, took his life at the early age of 61.  The Sanginites have one daughter, Toni Price.

Helen Hayworth Sanginite is now 92.  She and Toni, along with Toni’s husband, Randy, remain active with the American Ex-Prisoner of War Association. 

The historic Glenwood Boys in Service poster, which hung for years in Glenwood’s Grove Street Café, was broken out at a recent AXPOW meeting.  Of the 200 photos, Sanginite knew most of them.  In some instances, “I don’t remember that boy’s name, but I remember where he lived.”

She has a cache of other memories as well, such as meeting Amelia Earhart, “I met Amelia through a friend, Jean Benson.  Jean lived out on High Point Road and flew her own plane.  Amelia visited her when she came to Greensboro.”

She also has memories of the Preddy brothers – preceding their World War II heroics.   “The Preddys were distant cousins.  When their family came to our home to visit, the Preddy boys tried their best to aggravate my sisters and me – they were very good at it.”

Sanginite attended McIver Elementary and Central Junior High Schools and graduated from Grimsley High School, class of 1941.

In addition to raising her daughter, she worked for Joseph Ruzicka Book Binders and Pilot Life Insurance Company.  An active member of the Greensboro’s First Moravian Church, she has taught Sunday School, sang in the choir and served as president of the Women’s Fellowship, “I always try to do what I’m asked.” 

She and her sister, Dorothy, served food at Potter’s House for over 20 years.

Should a poster of Glenwood girls who kept the World War II home fires burning be found, I expect Helen Hayworth Sanginite’s photo to be front and center.

  

   

         

SUITCASE HOLDS CACHE OF MEMORIES

The phrase, “Living out of a suitcase,” means more to 92-year old Jane Doner Fredrickson than to some. 

PRE-WWII SUITCASE AT LEAST 84 YEARS OLD
STILL HOLD TREASURE CACHE OF INFORMATION

 

Along with her mother and sister, Fredrickson lived out of a suitcase during almost three years of Japanese imprisonment during World War II, “That suitcase was given to me by my grandmother in 1933.  She impressed upon me how different it was from most suitcases, inasmuch as it had linings.”

LEZAH ANDERSON ARNEY, ANN FREDRICKSON WILLIAMS,
JANE FREDRICKSON, & TONI SANGINITE PRICE.
ARNEY, WILLIAMS & PRICE ARE CHILDREN OF WW II POWS
FREDRICKSON WAS A CIVILIAN WW II POW

Jane Doner Fredrickson than to some.  Along with her mother and sister, she lived out of a suitcase during almost three years of Japanese imprisonment during World War II, “That suitcase was given to me by my grandmother in 1933.  She impressed upon me how different it was from most suitcases, inasmuch as it had linings.”

Fredrickson was born on the Island of Cebu in the Philippines to school-teaching parents.  Her father taught several years before associating with a coconut plantation on the Island of Mindanao – her mother continued to teach in Cebu.  Jane Fredrickson attended the all-girls Santa Teresa Academy.  She was the only American in her school. 

All was well with the Doners.

Then came the war.

 “My father couldn’t get back to Cebu, so when evacuation was ordered on Christmas Day, 1941, my mother, sister and I left for the hills along with other American and British civilians,” Fredrickson reflected recently.  “I volunteered to work on the waterfront, but when the Japanese started bombing the docks, my supervisor, an Army colonel, said he needed a man who could jump on a truck and carry a gun.  At that time, I wished I had been a boy!

About 15 families stayed in two houses on a sugar plantation for a few days, but when we heard Manila had fallen we moved further into the hills.  We lived in bamboo huts with nipa thatch roofs until May 1, 1942 when we surrendered to the Japanese.

Imprisoned on Cebu, we were first kept in a house, then a jail, and eventually moved to an abandoned junior college building, formerly used as a barracks by Japanese troops.  The building and grounds were indescribably filthy!

In October, we were moved to Club Filipino, a wooden building with thatched roof.    In December, 1942 we went aboard a Japanese ship – five days later we reached Manila and were taken to Santo Tomas.  We remained there until liberated by American troops almost three years later.”

A few housekeeping items are in order here:  Manila’s University of Santo Tomas was taken over by the Japanese and used as their largest internment center.  Upward to 3700 Americans were imprisoned at Santo Tomas, more than at any other location. 

Jane Fredrickson’s father, Landis Doner, survived the Mindanao Death March after his capture.  In January, 1944 he was moved to Santo Tomas – the family was together again, but not under the most favorable of circumstances. 

During the battle to retake the Philippines, Allied Forces bombed Japanese facilities in Manila and Santo Tomas was shelled by the Japanese. 

The rest of the world learned about Santo Tomas in the March 5, 1945 issue of Life Magazine.  According to Life, “The liberated Americans were sick, hungry and subdued.”  Jane Fredrickson this as a vast understatement.

She would know.  Should she forget, there are the three versions of her diary for reference.  She has the rough draft, written on scraps of paper as inconsequential as Japanese cigarette pack wrappers.  Later came a hand-written transcription and finally, a typed version.

WW II PRISONER OF WAR KEPT DAY BY DAY JOURNAL OF CAPTIVITY

“The Japanese guards routinely confiscated and destroyed personal diaries.  I was caught writing in my diary, but they let me continue when told I was doing school work.”

Fredrickson had entrusted a Filipino friend with her Cebu diary, “Wrapped in oilcloth, he buried it under his bamboo house.  After the war, we made contact and he shipped the diary to me.  In the meantime, he and his wife had a daughter – they named her Jane!”

During her imprisonment, Fredrickson found out just how wise her grandmother had been, “I kept writing every day, the linings in the suitcase made wonderful hiding places.”

WRITER MOST APPRECIATIVE OF GREAT AMERICAN
SHARING HER TREASURED MEMORABILIA

After the war, Jane Doner Fredrickson graduated from Penn State University, where she met and later married Robert A. Fredrickson, a World War II cryptographer.  The family moved to Greensboro in 1949.  He taught history and music at Greensboro/Grimsley High School for 35 years.  She taught Spanish and English at four Greensboro Middle Schools.  Robert Fredrickson died March 13, 2015 at 91.

The Fredricksons had two children, Ann Fredrickson Williams and Craig Fredrickson, as well as four grandchildren.

In 1992, Jane Fredrickson received a letter from Santa Teresa Academy, “They invited our senior class back for our official graduation – 50 years later.  I was honored to be the keynote speaker.”

She is an optimist, as her mother must have been – Millicent Doner wrote to her hometown newspaper as Santo Tomas was being liberated, “We are fashionably thin due to slow starvation.  We’ve had narrow escapes and shells are flying over our heads as I write, but no one is afraid – our Boys (American GIs) are here now!” 

THE GERMANS JUST THOUGHT THE WAR WAS OVER FOR PAUL DALLAS

Fayetteville's Paul Dallas was sharply dressed in his American Ex-Prisoner of War blazer when we first met in a Greensboro restaurant.  Hesitant to stare at his impressive array of medals, I suggested he must have held every AXPOW position, “Yes, I have – local, state and national,” came his straightforward reply.

PAUL DALLAS HAS SERVED IN EVERY AXPOW LEADERSHIP POSITION

Due to time restraints, we parted with my encouragement that he write a book about his experiences.  He had a straightforward reply for that too, “Nobody would want to read about me!”

Several weeks later, he called from his home in Fayetteville, “You suggested I write a book.  Well, I’ve started it three times, only to lose everything in computer crashes – would you help me?”

It was my straightforward answer this time, “You bet!”

The Dallas farm in East Central Mississippi had 60 acres under cultivation when the 1943 draft notice came for Paul Dallas, the oldest son and primary farm hand.  “My father begged for a deferment until the crops were laid by.  One day I hauled the last wagon-load of corn to the barn, the next day I reported to Camp Shelby.”

Dallas had never ridden a train or been out of the state of Mississippi.  A troop train ride to the Port of Debarkation at Newport News, Virginia filled in both blanks.  “Traveling through the Carolinas, I told my buddies we couldn’t grow collards or turnips in Mississippi like we kept seeing along the way.  Quietly, someone explained to me we were seeing something new to me -- tobacco!” 

MISSISSIPPI FARM BOY ADDRESSED SENATORS &
CONGRESSMEN ABOUT VETERANS ISSUES

His first boat ride got Dallas to Italy just in time to leave for the Invasion of Southern France in August, 1944.  The day after Thanksgiving, his infantry company was over-run by German tanks, Dallas was captured.

Several POW camps later, bookending an inhumane six days and nights locked in a rail-car without food or water, Dallas was among 40 prisoners sent to the forced labor camp at Runddorf – in Eastern Germany, near the borders of Poland and Czechoslovakia.

“We worked seven days a week cutting ice blocks from frozen ponds, cleaning out sewage ditches, and digging tank traps for the rapidly approaching Russian Army.  The German guards knew they would be shot on sight when the Russians arrived, so the 32 surviving POWs and the seven German guards all left the camp, walking in the direction of Allied Forces.

Days later, we were intercepted by the Russians.  They machine-gunned the guards and marched us towards Russia – to Siberia, we surmised.”

After two weeks of walking eastward, the group reached Sagan, Poland and Luft III, where they were deloused, examined, and treated by Russian doctors.  Finally, the POWs were placed on trucks and sent back towards American lines – on the way, they learned they had missed V-E Day.

“It was a long hard struggle, but I never lost my faith – in God that His strength was sufficient, in the Army that they would eventually rescue me, and in my family that they were praying for me. 

For sure, I was one happy guy to reach Le Havre, France and see ships at the dock ready to carry us home!  POWs received priority passage, so all I needed was a quick OK by a doctor,” exclaimed Dallas.

The OK was not forthcoming.  He passed out when leaving the doctor’s tent.  Five weeks later he woke up from a coma, only to lapse a few hours later into a second coma, this time for two weeks.  “I peeked at my chart while being stretchered onto a hospital ship.  I had spinal meningitis, double pneumonia and hepatitis – conflicted by other medical issues and malnutrition.”  

Dallas was treated in Army hospitals in New York, Georgia and Florida before receiving a medical discharge in 1946.  Over the summers before graduating from Mississippi State University, Dallas sold Bibles in North Carolina, whereupon he made the decision to call North Carolina home.

Although Dallas kept his WW II and POW experiences private and unmentioned for 40 years, his advocacies and involvement for the past 30 years are legendary.  He has, indeed, held every AXPOW office.  He has addressed both Senate and Congressional Committee regarding veterans affairs.   He and his wife have served as National Services Officers and assisted veterans all over the country.

DORIS & PAUL DALLAS HAVE ADVOCATED FOR
VETERANS ACROSS AMERICA

He worked several years for the Public Works Commission of the City of Fayetteville and later retired as District Manager of the Lumbee River Electric Membership Corporation in Red Springs, NC.

DALLAS TOOK VETERANS ISSUES TO THE TOP!

Dallas, now 91, married Doris Cole Temple in 1974, they are of the Methodist faith.  Their combined families include five children, six grands, and seven great-grands.

Harry Thetford is a retired Sears Store Manager who enjoys writing about veterans.  Contact him at htthetford@aol.com