Ohio woman finds 'War is Over!' Independent

Copyright © 2008
Gallup Independent
By Elizabeth Hardin-Burrola
Staff writer

GALLUP — Rosemary Maehre hasn’t lived in Gallup for more than 60 years, but a recent discovery instantly brought up her childhood memories of Gallup.

Maehre, now a resident of Toledo, Ohio, was sorting through some belongings of her mother, Doris, who passed away in 2002, when she discovered a yellowing and fragile newspaper.

“I pulled it out and almost fell over,” Maehre said in a telephone interview. It was the Gallup Independent, and it was dated Tuesday, Aug. 14, 1945. Maehre looked further and discovered her mother had actually saved two different editions of the Independent from that same historic date.

The first edition’s main headline read, “World Still Awaits Japan’s Reply.” The extra edition screamed, “WAR IS OVER!” in 120-point type.

After looking through the newspapers, Maehre called the Independent to share information published in the papers and to share some of her memories of Gallup.

According to Maehre, her family moved to Gallup in the spring of 1945 and moved away about 18 months later. Her father, Harold Key, was a butcher for Safeway, which in those years was located across the street from El Morro Theatre.

Maehre has fond memories of Gallup, where she attended fifth and sixth grade. She particularly enjoyed visiting El Morro Theatre, where she and her mother would attend Friday evening concerts, and the Gallup Inter-Tribal Indian Ceremonial, where she was fascinated by the Navajo women who wove rugs, and the Navajo men who created sand paintings. Maehre said she still has the concert program from El Morro when the guest performer was the famous operatic soprano, Helen Jepson. She also remembers how excited she was to learn that Sonja Henie, the Norwegian champion figure skater and Hollywood actress, was making an appearance in Gallup.

Life was difficult during World War II, Maehre recalled.

Grocery staples like meat, butter, and sugar were rationed, she said, although she believes her family may have had more meat than most because of her father’s job. People ate “oleo” instead of butter and had to mix in food coloring to make the stuff look like butter.

Leather shoes were hard to come by as leather was mostly reserved for U.S. soldiers, Maehre explained, and women and girls typically wore ankle socks since nylon and silk stockings were equally rare. In the Key household, old feed sacks were sewn into bonnets and dresses for Maehre and her younger sisters.

Maehre remembered seeing lots of military personnel in Gallup during the war, and she remembers hearing — and feeling — an extraordinarily loud boom one day in July 1945. The jolt was so powerful, she said, it rattled her family’s dishes in the kitchen cupboard.

“Nobody knew what happened,” Maehre said, but she recalls people speculating a big ammunition dump had possibly blown up.

Maehre said she later learned that mysterious boom was the explosion of the first atomic bomb at the Trinity Site, located on what is now White Sands Missile Range. “That was all top secret stuff back then,” Maehre said of the testing.

Less than a month later came the day that prompted Maehre’s mother to save two copies of the Gallup Independent. “I remember everybody celebrating,” said Maehre of Japan’s surrender. “Everybody was rejoicing all over.”

According to the vintage newspapers, New Mexico’s Gov. Dempsey issued a proclamation naming Wednesday and Thursday, Aug. 15-16, as double holidays in the state. The governor requested churches be open throughout the day, special church services and patriotic celebrations be held, American flags to be displayed from public and private buildings, and all liquor establishments be closed until 7 p.m. on Thursday.

Maehre read through some of the war-related articles in the newspapers. Although one article noted that many young American Indian men and women were away from home serving in the military, another article noted that Indians on reservations in Arizona and New Mexico were being denied the right to vote. Another article featured a story about Cpl. Edward Beyuka of Zuni Pueblo, a survivor of the Bataan Death March and Japanese POW camps, who had been recently liberated by allied forces.

The newspapers also included a variety of national and local news. With the end of the war, the Associated Press reported, government officials were predicting seven million Americans would be unemployed by Christmas. Locally, plans for Route 66 were being discussed in Gallup, the 24th Annual Indian Ceremonial was beginning later in the week, and a huge tarantula — captured in the yard of 305 E. Sullivan — was on exhibition in a glass fruit jar in the newspaper office.

After reading through the newspapers, Maehre, now in her 70s, said she would like to visit Gallup again. Although she once passed through town on Amtrak, she said, the stop was so brief that she wasn’t allowed to step off the train.