NORTHWEST OHIO HISTORY

VOL. 77, NO. 1 FALL 2009 LARRY L. NELSON, Editor Bowling Green State University JOSEPH D. FAYKOSH, Graduate Assistant Bowling Green State University

EDITORIAL BOARD

KATHERINE JELLISON TIMOTHY MESSER-KRUSE Ohio University Bowling Green State University

JAMES MARSHALL R. BRUCE WAY Maumee Valley Historical Society Monroe Community College

DONALD F. MELHORN MARILYN VAN VORHIS WENDLER Marshall and Melhorn Maumee Valley Historical Society

Submission Data: Authors may submit manuscripts as e-mail attachments or on disk. Manuscripts should not exceed thirty pages of text and should be double-spaced using Microsoft Word with top margins of 1” and side margins of 1.25”. The font should be Times New Roman 12 with notes double- spaced at the end of the manuscript. The Chicago Manual of Style should be used as reference in matters of style and citation. Correspondence concerning manuscripts and books for review should be addressed to the editor: Larry L. Nelson, Department of History, Bowling Green State University, Bowling Green, Ohio 43403-0220; [email protected], (419) 372-2030, fax (419) 372-7208. Web address: www.bgsu.edu/departments/history/.

Northwest Ohio History (ISSN: 0029-3407) is distributed by the Maumee Valley Historical Society. Society membership dues are as follows: Senior/Student $25, General $35, and Legacy Club $50. The Founders Club $100, Heritage Club $150, and Curator’s Club $250. Membership includes a subscription to the journal. Membership inquiries should be made to the Maumee Valley Historical Society, 1035 River Road, Maumee, OH 43537; phone (419) 893-9602, fax (419) 893-3108; Web address: www.wolcotthouse.org. Back issues of the journal also may be purchased from the society’s office.

The articles appearing in Northwest Ohio History are abstracted and indexed in the EBSCO database EBSCOhost and in the Journal of American History.

Cover: Ward M. Canaday Center for Special Collections, University of Toledo. During the Second World War, government sponsored vocational training classes offered at the University of Toledo gave workers, like the one pictured here at Libbey-Owens-Ford, the skills required by local industries to effectively meet the demands of war-time production. See John Napp, “The University of Toledo and Civilian Defense Training During World War II. The University Of Toledo and Civilian Defense Training during World War II

JOHN NAPP

The University of Toledo’s College of Engineering was founded in 1931. Fifteen Bachelor of Engineering degrees were awarded in 1933. The college grew rapidly as the country came out of the Depression and until the United States entered World War II. But after the Japanese bombing of Pearl Harbor, enrollment in the College of Engineering dropped ninety percent. This was the largest decline of any college within the university. Approximately fifteen College of Engineering faculty members, including two women, resigned at the beginning of the war to join the armed services. By the end of the war, about twenty-five women students from the college had joined the military in some capacity. Throughout the war, the federal government conducted several programs at the university that were connected to the war effort. Among its offerings, the university provided air pilot training and vocational training for work in factories producing war materials. Additionally, women interested in nursing were promised work at local hospitals upon completing their training. This paper will discuss the programs that were administered through the College of Engineering and some of the impacts they had on Toledo and the war effort. The first programs to be discussed were for men only, while the other was for both men and women.1 In 1939, the College of Engineering at the University of Toledo (then called Toledo University) began offering training to prepare students to obtain a civil- ian pilot’s license. The Civil Aeronautics Authority sponsored this program, known as Civilian Pilot Training (CPT). Instruction was provided on campus and at the municipal airport. While the training cost $20,000 per student, the university charged students $32.00 for the instruction.2 Congress provided funding for this program to encourage men and women to obtain flight training. The goal was to create a pool of potential military and naval pilots. As the United States’ participation in the war increased, the CPT was insufficient for wartime needs. The program was renamed the Civil Aeronautics Administra- tion War Training Service (CAAWTS) in 1942. Initially there were forty men in the program who were housed in the Field House on campus. CPT and CAAWTS students were subject to rules that were stricter than other university students at the time. They were required to wear khaki uni- forms to all campus classes and green uniforms to airport classes. “Lights

John Napp is Associate Professor and Engineering Librarian at The University of Toledo. He has had this position since 2001. The University of Toledo and Civilian Defense Training 21 out” in their barracks was at 10:30 PM, at which time there was a bed check.3 In the library, they were not allowed to talk, or to study in groups. They were also instructed to conduct themselves as “…gentlemen, and feet will not be raised off the floor or placed on another chair, window-sill, etc.”4 They were permitted to have a certain amount of fun, however. A letter from Captain Hickerson to Katherine Easley, Dean of Women, written December 15, 1942 thanked her for three parties for the men given by two sororities that fall.5 Approximately 133 men completed the CPT program and approximately 320 men completed the CAAWTS program. Graduates of these two programs served in all theaters of the war. It is not known exactly what missions graduates were involved in. However, it is known that several men from these programs were killed in action. In January 1941, London, England was the target of nightly German bomb- ing raids. In response, England conducted retaliatory raids against the German industrial center in Bremen. President Franklin Roosevelt had begun to assist the British war effort by sending airplanes to England as part of his lend-lease plan. The Japanese attack on the United States Navy base at Pearl Harbor in Hawaii was still twelve months away. Even though the United States was not involved militarily in the war at this point, the government was encouraging civilians to prepare for that eventuality. Federal authorities had identified a shortage of persons with technical skills in engineering, drafting, and other fields required by industry and understood that training for new and existing workers would be required in order to supply the airplanes, tanks, bombs and other military hardware for the anticipated conflict.

Courtesy of the Ward M. Canaday Center for Special Collections, University of Toledo

In October 1940, the United States Congress had passed an appropriations bill (54 Stat. 1034) which allocated $9,000,000 for “the cost of short engineer- ing courses of college grade, provided by engineering schools…designed to meet the shortage of engineers with specialized training in fields essential to the national defense.” After the United States entered the war in December 1941, the shortage of engineers increased and became acute. Engineers and 22 NORTHWEST OHIO HISTORY, VOL. 77, NO. 1 engineering students who enlisted in the military were not available for work in factories. Therefore, the United States Office of Education organized several programs, known variously as Engineering, Science and Management Defense Training (ESMDT) or Engineering, Science and Management War Training (ESMWT) or Engineering Defense Training. The university conducted these courses at cost with the Office of Education paying for the instruction, labora- tory materials, and maintenance. In early January 1941, 1,050 students were enrolled in courses at the univer- sity to prepare them for work in defense industries.6 Across the country, over 100 universities, including some of the top engineering schools in the nation such as Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Purdue University, Stanford University, and Carnegie Institute of Technology (now Carnegie Mellon Uni- versity), had similar programs. [Tables 1 and 2 show the enrollment in ESMWT classes at several universities inside and out of Ohio.] Delos Palmer, dean of the College of Engineering at the university, had initially planned for 235 students to attend classes in the new program. When over four times the expected number of students enrolled, Palmer needed to scramble in order to find an additional twenty-three instructors.� Eventually, Palmer’s new-found faculty came from various departments within the univer- sity and from professionals recruited from local industries. The seven courses offered in this first session were engineering drawing, machine design, materials inspection and testing, diesel engines, production engineering, tool engineer-

Toledo University students receive instruction during an ESMWT class, c. 1942. Courtesy of the Ward M. Canaday Center for Special Collections, University of Toledo The University of Toledo and Civilian Defense Training 23 ing, and production supervision. Courses were offered between 6:30-10:30 in the evening so working men and women could take advantage of the training. Encouraging women to take classes allowed the College of Engineering to increase its enrollment at a time when male students (or potential students) were going into the military. Students came from a fifty-mile radius of the city of Toledo to attend classes. Later sessions offered an increasing number of classes. The second session provided students a choice of sixteen subjects. The University added electrical equipment engineering, time and motion studies and their application, advanced engineering drawing, jig and fixture design, production engineering, inspection and testing or production materials, cost accounting, body engineering, and applied mathematics in addition to those taught in the first session. The number of courses in the third session increased to twenty-two. Busi- ness organization, concrete technology, methods engineering, personnel administration and labor relations, production cost accounting, and wing and body design were added to the curriculum. By 1942, the university was able to provide eighteen sessions of twelve-week courses. The curriculum continued to expand throughout 1943. In June, two courses, mathematics for teachers and physics for teachers, were offered in response to a need by area elementary and secondary schools. Local superintendents and principals were experiencing a shortage of teachers for those classes in their schools.� These classes were intended as a refresher for teachers planning to teach physics and mathematics in the upcoming school year.

Ohio Schools Offering ESMWT Courses Total Authorized Enrollment in May 1941 University of Akron 523 Case School of Applied Science 1,229 Fenn College 689 Ohio Northern University 322 Ohio State University 1,284 University of Toledo 925 Antioch College 125 University of Cincinnati 435 Ohio University 376 Table 1: Ohio Universities Offering ESMWT Programs9 Major U.S. Schools Offering ESMWT Courses Total Authorized Enrollment in May 1941 University of California 4,422 Notre Dame University 381 Purdue University 6,458 Massachusetts Institute of Technology 712 University of Michigan 531 Cornell University 2,213 Table 2: U.S Universities Offering ESMWT Programs10 24 NORTHWEST OHIO HISTORY, VOL. 77, NO. 1

The university marketed its courses in Toledo in the Blade, the Toledo Times, and in the Polish language Echo. Further, the school also advertised on bus and streetcars, radio stations, and by direct mailings to individuals, factories, and community organizations. Jessie R. Long, ESMWT personnel director, was instrumental in this effort. In particular, Long targeted his promotions for war-jobs training at women. Advertisements appealed to what Long believed was women’s love of country, their love of their friends, and their love for their husbands. Getting training and a subsequent war job, these ads stressed, would help supply needed war materials and thus end the conflict sooner. Many women took wartime jobs out of patriotism or in the hope that by aiding the war effort they would help their loved ones return home quickly and safely. Many women also saw these wartime jobs as a way out of the occupations typically open to women at the time. Working in a factory paid better than working as a waitress or store clerk. It was likely more exciting and reward- ing as well, given the importance attached to the work by the government and the media. Additionally, the push to secure a job in essential war industries was encouraged by advertising produced by federal government agencies such as the War Manpower Commission. The popular press glamorized and praised civilian women going to work. The Office of War Information urged popular magazines such as Saturday Evening Post to feature fictional stories about women taking war jobs. At the same time, women who did not join the workforce were often portrayed as selfish and unpatriotic.11 Both the Times and the Blade contained articles about area residents who had taken courses offered through the ESMWT. These articles served as advertisements for the ESMWT courses and also held up the person featured as a model citizen. One article featured a city water department worker who had started his eighteenth course. Another article featured a woman who had completed ten courses.12 She took classes four nights a week while working as an inspector at Northern Aircraft Products Division. In the article, she states that she intends to make this type of work her lifetime career. It is likely that many other women had similar ambitions. As the war drew to a close, there were pressures from unions and the gov- ernment for women to leave their war jobs so that returning men could have jobs.13 Looking at the advertising of this era one can see a progression from the early days of the war to the end. At the beginning of the war, advertising promoted women going to work in factories as the patriotic thing for a woman to do. Coming to her country’s aid at a time of war had been romanticized and glamorized. When it became clear that the war was going to end soon, there was a shift in advertising from promoting war work to promoting a return to traditional roles for women. Government and university officials also directed their advertising toward married men with children who were working in non-essential jobs. Early in the conflict, if these men received training and took a job in an essential war The University of Toledo and Civilian Defense Training 25 industry job they could stay with their families while providing the country with services essential to the war effort.14 Prior to 1943, fathers employed in war related jobs were safe from the draft. But in 1943, this exemption was dropped. Because of the large number of women entering the work force in essential industries, childcare became a public policy issue for the first time in the United States during this time. In 1942, the Works Progress Administration (WPA) established fourteen preschool play centers throughout Toledo. Mothers could leave their children in centers for up to three hours daily making this an option for women engaged in less than full-time employment. The centers were not permitted to serve meals to the children although they did offer milk, orange juice and cod liver oil. In 1943 there were nine government funded facilities in Toledo where mothers could leave their children during the day.15 In March 1943, Congress authorized $115,019 in Lanham Act funds be used to create thirty additional childcare centers in Toledo.24 These centers opened on April 1 and were operated under the direction of the Board of Education. These facilities offered childcare for preschool and school-aged children alike. Service began at 6:30 AM and ended at 8 PM throughout the year. And, unlike the WPA centers, these facilities served meals. But because these centers were never widely used, the federal government stopped funding childcare facilities in August, 1945. In Toledo, four area charities offered to watch children of working women. But when working mothers registered only nine children, the charities decided that the program would not be feasible.16

Early in the war, women were urged to work in industry. As the war drew to close, they were encouraged to return to home and family. Author’s collection. 26 NORTHWEST OHIO HISTORY, VOL. 77, NO. 1

Factory workers install bullet-resistant safety glass into bomber cockpits at the Toledo Libbey-Owens-Ford Plant. Courtesy of the Ward M. Canaday Center for Special Collections, University of Toledo

The wartime influx of women into the workplace also created other problems for factories unaccustomed to dealing with the unique needs of this group of workers. The ESMWT program at the university was expanded in 1943 to include a course titled “Counseling Women Workers.”17 Students in this class were trained in personnel and counseling issues such as childcare needs. To be accepted into this course it was necessary to be a high school graduate, employed as a foreman or supervisor of women in war industries, or to have a recommendation from management. The work these counselors performed in area factories was more similar to that of a social worker than a personnel manager. By 1945, thirty women had taken the counseling course. They found babysitters, apartments and listened to other issues the female workers had which might have increased their absenteeism.18 The impact of these training programs extended well beyond the university campus. Clearly, local businesses involved in manufacturing the products and materials needed by the military benefited directly. Willys-Overland Motors, Electric Auto-Lite, Toledo Scale, Devilbis, Spicer Manufacturing, and Libbey- Owens-Ford all employed workers prepared by the ESMWT program. To assist in the process, the university maintained a placement service to direct The University of Toledo and Civilian Defense Training 27 qualified graduates to appropriate positions. A total of 14,513 students participated in the training programs offered at the university before the classes were discontinued in December 1944.19 It is impossible to determine with any specificity the impact the programs at the university and their students had on the war. And yet it is clear that the civil- ian defense training offered by the university was effective and that as a direct result, Toledo industries were able to contribute significantly to the war effort. Willy-Overland Motors (now the Jeep division of Daimler-Chrysler Corpora- tion) manufactured over 300,000 jeeps, over 4,000,000 shells for 155mm guns, one billion bullet cores, gun hoists, and other war materials.20 Electric Auto-Lite produced automatic pilot devices known as “Elmer.” The company operated a tank depot that prepared various mechanized armaments for shipment overseas. In January 1941, Electric Auto-Lite began manufactur- ing fuse boosters for heavy shells and fuses for trench mortars.� Devilbis manufactured spray equipment for the application of a non-slip coating to walking surfaces of train cars, ships, tanks and airplanes. They also manufactured other spray painting equipment designed to quickly paint shells, bombs, airplanes, ships and other military equipment.� Libbey-Owens-Ford (LOF) developed and manufactured bullet-resistant airplane safety glass. It was primarily women who worked in the laminating department that made this special glass. LOF produced Plexiglas gun turrets, bomber noses, as well as glass bomber sights complete with cross hair.� When seen as part of a national program to provide vocational training to civilian men and women for technical work, it is clear that schools of engi- neering, such as the one at the University of Toledo, played an important role in advancing the war effort by providing needed training to men and women from the Toledo area who would likely never have otherwise attended col- lege courses. Much has been written on the transformation of the industrial economy of the United States from peacetime to wartime. This paper shows that the academy was transformed as well. During World War II, government supported civilian defense training at the University of Toledo allowed local industries to better supply needed war materials and services and thus hastened the United State’s ultimate victory in the conflict.

NOTES

1 Frank R. Hickerson, The Tower Builders: The Centennial Story of The University of Toledo 1872-1972. (Toledo: The University of Toledo Press, 1972). 202-232. 2 Toledo Times, “Flight Training At University To Be Tripled,” June 7, 1940. 3 Memorandum by Capt. F.R. Hickerson, “Disturbances in barracks after bed check,” December 1, 1942, The Ward M. Canaday Center for Special Collections, University of Toledo Libraries, Toledo, Ohio. 4 Memorandum by Major Miller, “Conduct In The Library,” June 17, 1945, The Ward M. Canaday Center for Special Collections, University of Toledo Libraries, Toledo, Ohio. 28 NORTHWEST OHIO HISTORY, VOL. 77, NO. 1

5 F.R. Hickerson to Katherine Easley, December 15, 1942. The Ward M. Canaday Center for Special Collections, University of Toledo Libraries, Toledo, Ohio. 6 Toledo Blade, “1,050 Persons Will Start Defense Training Tonight,” January 2, 1941. 7 Toledo Blade, “Toledo U. Seeks 23 Instructors,” January 1, 1941. 8 Delos Palmer to Superintendents and Principals, Secondary Schools, June 10, 1943. The Ward M. Canaday Center for Special Collections, University of Toledo Libraries, Toledo, Ohio. 9 Roy A. Seaton, “Engineering Defense Training – A Summation,” Journal of Engineering Education, (June 1940): 726. 10 Ibid., 723-725. In addition to the offerings at the Toledo campus, classes were taught by the university in Piqua, Mansfield, Bowling Green, Lima, Marion, Wauseon, Bryan, Fostoria, Fremont, Tiffin, and the Plumbrook Ordinance Depot at Sandusky. 11 For a more in-depth assessment of the role of advertising and popular magazines in shaping opinions about women working in defense jobs see Maureen Honey, Creating Rosie the Riveter: Class, Gender, and Propaganda during World War II, (Amherst, MA: The University of Massachusetts Press, 1984). 12 See Toledo Times, “City Worker Takes 18th Course in War” September 26, 1943 and the Toledo Blade, “Woman Called Best Trained Toledo Worker for War Jobs,” October 14 1943. 13 Nancy Gabin, “They Have Placed A Penalty on Womanhood’: The Protest Actions of Women Auto Workers in Detroit-Area UAW Locals, 1945-1947,” Feminist Studies 8 (1982): 374. 14 William Kitay, “What Do You Want To Know? Your Wartime Questions,” Toledo Blade, August 17, 1942. 15 Toledo Times, “Plan Helps Mothers Study Defense Roles Free From Care of Checking Children,” February 15, 1942. 16 Toledo Blade, “Plan to Open Nursery Units Dies for Lack of Patronage,” September 7, 1945. 17 Toledo Sunday Times, “Counseling Course Offered to Women,” October 3, 1943. 18 Toledo Sunday Times, “Plant Counselors Benefit Women Drawn From Domestic Routine,” March 18, 1945. 19 Hickerson, The Tower Builders, 236. 20 Toledo Blade, “300,000 Jeeps Made By Willys,” May 24, 1945. 21 Toledo Blade, “Auto-Lite Keeps Tanks Rolling,” March 12, 1943. Toledo Sunday Times, “Auto-Lite to Double Production of Fuses,” January 25, 1945. “Elmer’ Guides U.S. Bombers On True Course to Objective,” Toledo Blade, November 10, 1945. 22 Toledo Blade, “DeVilbiss Co. To Receive Army-Navy ‘E’ On Jan. 11,” December 25, 1942. Toledo Blade, “Nonskid Materials Now Can Be Sprayed,” December 7, 1943. 23 Margrette Daney, “Toledo Glass Sights Foe, Protects Allies in Battle,” Toledo Blade, Sep- tember 2, 1942.