University of Virginia Library

Relief

Bundles for Britain was the first war relief organization to strike
a responsive chord in the hearts of the people of Charlottesville and
Albemarle County after the German “blitzkrieg” against France and
near-capture of the British army at Dunkirk. The agency had been
founded in the United States in December, 1939, for the purpose of
sending necessities and comforts to the people of the embattled islands
which soon were so near to—and yet so far from—the western limit
of Nazi conquest. About the first of July, 1940, when it was beginning
to become clear that in the near future the Germans could leap
the English Channel only in the comparatively small numbers permitted
by aerial transportation, the Charlottesville Branch of Bundles
for Britain was organized to bolster British morale against the
destructive air raids which were to follow the debacle in France.

Mrs. Paul White came from the central office in New York City
to assist in the organization of Bundles for Britain's local branch.
She was welcomed by a group of women of the city and county in
the home of Miss Ruth Risher (Mrs. John W. Wheeler-Bennett)
on Oakhurst Circle in Charlottesville. A Britisher born and bred,
Mrs. Arthur Frank Macconochie of Farmington, was their undisputed
choice to serve as president of the local branch. Other officers
elected included Mrs. William H. White, Jr., vice president: Miss
Risher, secretary; Mrs. Edwin P. Lehman, corresponding secretary;
and Harry Frazier, Jr., treasurer. These selections remained unchanged
throughout all or most of the war: Miss Risher retained
her position even while serving with the American Red Cross in the
Middle East.[52]

The basic and most constant service of the enthusiastic women of
the Charlottesville Branch was the knitting of warm woolen clothing

for use across the Atlantic. Its members set up shop in the J. D.
and J. S. Tilman department store. There knitting needles, wool,
and knitting bags were distributed, and articles bearing the British
coat of arms were sold. After about a year they moved their headquarters
into a Corner shop which had been secured rent free. Sweaters,
socks, sea boots, scarves, and headgear were produced by as many
as several hundred women at an average rate of about twenty-five
per week throughout the war years. Some of these garments were
given directly to British sailors when they visited in the community
while their vessels were undergoing repairs. In a letter of thanks to
Charlottesville and Albemarle workers of Bundles for Britain one
of these men of the Royal Navy expressed his appreciation not only
for the organization's gift but also for the attitude of local residents
toward the visiting Englishmen. “The thing that has touched us
... who are so far away from our homes is the great kindness and
friendliness shown to us ...; and when we get back to England you
can rest assured that we [will] take back an excellent report of the
American people.”[53] Other locally knitted garments furnished emergency
relief to British civilians who had been bombed out of their
homes. The greater part of them, however, helped to clothe with
comfortable accessories the men of Great Britain's armed forces scattered
over widespread battlefronts, especially those stationed in cold
and frigid areas.

Supplementing daily work on the production of clothing for the
British, the Charlottesville Branch of Bundles for Britain occasionally
found opportunities to raise substantial sums of money for other
specific needs of the English. A benefit reception was held at the
Farmington Country Club on August 2, 1940, in honor of the
movie star Madeleine Carroll, a native of England who was then in
the community for the filming of the technicolor motion picture
“Virginia.” Among other Britishers present were Lady Russell,
author of Elizabeth and Her German Garden, and John W. WheelerBennett,
thorough student of the modern world. Through this
reception the fledgling local Bundles for Britain group raised about
$700. To meet what was then England's most crying need, this
sum was devoted to the purchase of surgical instruments and medical
supplies.

In the summer of 1940 the British-American Ambulance Corps,
working through the national Bundles for Britain organization,
began to solicit gifts for the purchase in the United States of sorely
needed ambulances, which cost approximately $1,350 each. Mrs.
William Hall Goodwin became chairman of the local ambulance
drive and was photographed, together with other Bundles for Britain
leaders, on East Main Street while standing in front of a specially
labelled automobile used in the promotion of donations for this

appealing cause.[54] Before the end of the war the local group had
collected enough money for the shipment to England of four of
these vehicles of mercy.

Pummeled with destructive explosives from the air, Great Britain
was also in urgent need of mobile canteens during the second half of
the year 1940. These kitchens on wheels were used to carry hot food
to stricken people in bombed cities. One of Albemarle County's most
famous twentieth century daughters, Nancy Langhorne of “Mirador”
near Greenwood, who had crossed the Atlantic to become Lady
Astor and a member of the British Parliament, transmitted through
her niece, Mrs. Ronald Tree of “Mirador,” and Mrs. Chiswell
Perkins a request that several mobile canteens be supplied by gifts
from her native community. In support of this appeal Mrs. Macconochie
delivered a stirring address over the local radio station,
WCHV, on September 9, 1940. She reminded her listeners, “We
... can lay our heads on our pillows at night secure in the knowledge
that our roofs will still be over us when we awake,” and confidently
expressed her conviction “that we want to continue to help
the valiant people in Britain over whom the wrath of modern warfare
has burst in all its fury.” Referring to the “direct request”
from England for rolling kitchens, she pledged that “all future donations
to Bundles for Britain” received by the Charlottesville Branch
would be allocated to the mobile kitchen fund “until we have
reached our goal.” The people of the community forthwith provided
adequate funds to make possible prompt shipment of five of
these canteens.

In a special dispatch to the Charlottesville Daily Progress a British
novelist, Elspeth Huxley, who had been a prewar visitor in the
city, traced the result of another handshake across the sea. “It's a
long way from Charlottesville, Virginia, to Malmesbury, Wiltshire,
England,” she wrote, “yet there's a link connecting the two. Some
time back the Charlottesville chapter of Bundles for Britain made
a very handsome gesture. They sent over the money to buy a mobile
tea kitchen to serve lonely outposts of British soldiers and airmen.
In due course the tea kitchen was built and equipped and became
Mobile Tea Kitchen No. 833, attached to the Y. M. C. A.'s fleet.
And it was put on the road in the Malmesbury area of Wiltshire
where I live. So I've seen it on duty, and now I've been privileged
to drive it on its rounds. ...”[55]

A variety of special events followed the Madeleine Carroll reception
on the local Bundles for Britain calendar. John W. WheelerBennett
described “The Battle of Britain” to an impressed audience
in Cabell Hall at the University of Virginia. His observations of
the aerial peril to which England was exposed were of the graphic
sort which only a recently returned eyewitness could have been capable

of revealing. A Christmas Fair was held at the Farmington
Country Club to raise money. The Keswick Hunt Club gave a benefit
horse show at “Beau Val.” And in June, 1941, an auction of
prized possessions donated by generous friends of the cause was held
at Farmington. Antique furniture, boxwood, and thoroughbred
puppies were among the items which went on the auction block and
produced a revenue of about $750. But there was also offered an
exciting royal antique of a more surprising kind. The “Chips About
Charlottesville” column of the local newspaper enthused over a detailed
description of a genuine Irish linen undergarment—a chemise
or slip—which had belonged to Queen Victoria and on which one
could see the imperial crown done in fine red stitches. “We have
heard of movie stars being mobbed by fans” and losing parts of their
clothing, the awed columnist commented, “but think of being able
to boast that you own the Queen's slip.”[56]

When Lord Halifax, England's ambassador to the United States,
and Lady Halifax visited “Mirador” in 1941, Mrs. Macconochie
pinned a Bundles for Britain button on him. It was then revealed
that several young English refugees, including a niece and a nephew
of Queen Elizabeth, had been evacuated to “Mirador” and had
resided there for some time.[57]

An announcement made by the Charlottesville Branch of Bundles
for Britain at the end of its first year reported that the people of the
community had contributed to it a total of $15,587.80. In addition
to previously mentioned gifts which had been sent across the
Atlantic, this sum had helped to provide three large payments to the
Queen's Hospital for Children in London, two lots of new blankets,
two consignments of new clothes, and twenty air raid shelter cots.[58]
Among many grateful letters of acknowledgment from England
came one which was especially pleasing. On July 2, 1941, Mrs.
Winston Churchill wrote from 10 Downing Street to Mrs. Macconochie:
“I have been told that the Chapter of [Bundles for Britain
in] Charlottesville, Virginia, of which you are President, has
sent a substantial sum of money to the Queen's Hospital for Children,
and as Honorary Sponsor for Bundles for Britain, I write to
tell you how much we over here appreciate this and all your organization
is doing. We thank you for your generosity and for your
thought and care for our people.”

After Pearl Harbor many Americans felt that efforts previously
directed toward aid for England should be diverted to services for
the armed forces of the United States. Indeed, a local unit of the
new Bundles for America organization was established in Charlottesville
with Mrs. Edward Gamble as president, assisted by Mrs. Robert
Kent Gooch. Sharing the quarters of Bundles for Britain, it dispensed
wool for the knitting of garments for American servicemen.

But Bundles for America did not supersede Bundles for Britain.
Though she observed a decline in the number of her knitters, Mrs.
Macconochie and her cohorts continued to maintain an active group
until July, 1945.[59] By then victory had been won in Europe, and
there were no longer such desperate needs in the battered but unbowed
British Isles.

In the period before American entry into the war there had also
been in Charlottesville another British war relief organization independent
of Bundles for Britain. Its original and special concern was
Queen Charlotte's Hospital in London. This hospital had been
founded long ago by the Queen Charlotte for whom the small and
centrally located eighteenth century town in Albemarle County, Virginia,
was named. Some years before Hitler launched the German
armies on their fateful rampage this institution had given a benefit
ball with a colonial Charlottesville decor inspired by sketches which
Mrs. James Keith Symmers of Charlottesville had drawn and sent to
London for the occasion. When the hospital began to suffer German
bomb damage, Mrs. Symmers received an appeal for aid. She enlisted
the interest of others and soon had built a small but effective
organization. Judge A. D. Dabney served as its president, Bernard
P. Chamberlain as vice president, and Dr. W. D. Haden as treasurer.
State Senator John S. Battle, University President John Lloyd
Newcomb, and other prominent citizens were members of its board
or gave it their support. The chief achievement of this group was
the raising of a substantial sum promptly donated to the hospital.
One of its beds was thereby endowed and was named Charlottesville.
Such transitory impulses of generosity are easily forgotten, and so
events proved in this instance. Almost a year after England had
last been bombed Mayor Roscoe S. Adams of Charlottesville received
a letter of gratitude from a mother whose “bonny baby” had
recently been born in Queen Charlotte's Hospital. As “one of the
many mothers who have occupied the Charlottesville bed,” she
wanted to thank him “or whoever is responsible for the upkeep of
the bed.” His Honor the mayor and a local newspaper columnist
could not recall or ascertain who should receive the appreciative
mother's thanks.[60]

Evidently spurred by its initial success, the group which had endowed
the hospital bed was transformed during the autumn of 1941
into an agency for more general British war relief. Jesse B. Wilson
became president, and other officers retained their positions. Articles
procured from British War Relief headquarters in New York City
were sold for Britons' benefit, first in the O. E. and C. L. Hawkins
store downtown and then in the building which later became the
University Cafeteria. Admittedly, the proceeds of the operation of
this shop did not rival the income of the local branch of Bundles

for Britain, but this relief work was supplemented by the mailing
of garden seeds and children's toys to hungry and tired victims of
Nazi destruction in England. In good time the members of this
group pooled their efforts with those of the Charlottesville Branch
of Bundles for Britain in connection with a clothing collection campaign
and willingly lost their separate identity.[61]

Early in the war, at the time of the Italian invasion of Greece,
efforts were made in the United States through the Greek War Relief
Association in New York City to alleviate suffering in that nation
before the total occupation by German and Italian troops could be
completed and all ports of entry closed. In this campaign the local
organization was headed by Gus Gianakos as president. William
Pappas was vice president and Nicholas Velle treasurer. The sum of
$3,900 was raised. After a drive for the collection of used clothing
in 1944 the American-Greek people of Charlottesville shipped a ton
of usable garments.[62]

Nor did residents of the locality overlook the distress of the downtrodden
Chinese, who had been fighting against a ruthless invader
in an almost hopeless warfare longer than any of the world's embattled
peoples. Upon request of United China Relief, Inc., the gift
of $2,000 was asked of the community in 1942. The Business and
Professional Women's Club, of which Mrs. Elizabeth Beard was
then president, accepted the responsibility of equalling or excelling
this amount. Almost as soon as the club made it known that money
was needed for this cause, checks poured in without special solicitation,
and the quota was promptly oversubscribed by ten per cent.
Wendell Willkie, honorary president of United China Relief, congratulated
the club by telegram upon its immediate success. Mrs.
Beard also received an Award of Recognition issued by the democratic
administration in China in appreciation of the community's
assistance to its hard-pressed republican faction. Signed by Mayling
Soong Chiang (Madame Chiang Kai Shek), this certificate of gratitude
was brought in 1943 to the United States in person by the
wife of China's chief executive.

There were uncounted numbers of organized and individual efforts
to send clothing and food to various destinations where normal
living had been disrupted by the iron hand of war. In the spring
of 1944, for example, local Parent-Teacher Associations collected
in the New Armory discarded garments donated in the “Share Your
Clothes With Russia” campaign. Though the Anglo-American second
front assault against northern Europe had not at that time been
initiated and the Soviets had borne the chief brunt of the costly task
of reversing Germany's early successes, a day or two before the close
of this drive receipts were described as being “very light.” The
Charlottesville Ministerial Association endorsed six months later a

clothing collection in the city's churches for refugees who had been
freed from the Nazi yoke. The appeal this time had emanated from
the United Nations Relief and Rehabilitation Administration. That
new agency was also to distribute the 3,000 cans of vegetables and
fruits from the city and the county which were requested at the
height of the vegetable garden season in 1945. The Charlottesville
and Scottsville Canning Centers cooperated in preparing this contribution
to foreign relief.[63]

The interdenominational group of white and Negro women in
the Charlottesville branch of the United Council of Church Women
did much after V-J Day to help families overseas whose destitute
condition, which was then revealed for the first time in something
approaching representatively stark perspective, shocked the world.
News that many small babies utterly lacked proper clothing gave
rise to a drive by American church women to ship a million diapers
across the oceans. The women of Charlottesville sent 2,347 of them.
Within the year 1946, in a room assigned to them in Christ Episcopal
Church, these women also gathered 2,740 pounds of clothing,
counted up 2,115 pounds of tinned foods, assembled more than
thirty kits each of which contained two dozen articles of clothing
for small children, and collected $772.80 for the purchase of food
in bulk. Mrs. W. Roy Mason was the leader in this work.

Whenever and wherever the status of international mail delivery
would permit the sending of individual packages to relatives or
friends abroad, people in the locality would dispatch carefully selected
and painstakingly wrapped parcels. About two years after
firing ceased in Europe at least five packages were sent by unknown
donors to a total stranger in vanquished Germany. Mrs. Margarete
Meissner of Hessen had written to Charlottesville asking for any special
gifts available. Her appeal was broadcast with excellent results.
The story of her success in making charity prevail over enmity was
deemed worthy of publication in a local newspaper column. Her acknowledgment
read: “My English is not sufficient to express my and
my five little ones' thanks for your wonderful parcels containing so
many delicious things! We should have desired you could have
seen our joy. May God bless you!”[64]

A more personal and rewarding method of trying to counterbalance
the deprivations of war in Europe was discovered by some local
people. Through an international social service organization they
assumed financial responsibilities for French and Belgian children
who had been orphaned and were being brought up in institutional
homes across the Atlantic. Episcopalian women of Greenwood and
Crozet thus adopted a three-year old Belgian boy, contributing $15
per month for his support and showering him with presents. Four
named women of the city and county took war orphans under their

individual wings. The foster parent of a ten year old French girl
was pleased to receive letters from her protege. By way of explaining
why she had undertaken something which might easily be a burden
as well as a joy, this citizen of Charlottesville said, “I feel we
all ought to open our hearts to the world's suffering in some way,
and I hit upon this method.”[65] And a good one it was, at that.

In another and somewhat different type of charitable war relief
Charlottesville provided Virginia's leadership in a nationwide effort.
The American Library Association, the American Red Cross, and the
United Service Organizations, Inc., launched on January 12, 1942,
a Victory Book Campaign to supplement the government's already
existing library facilities for servicemen. Army camps, Navy bases,
ships sailing the seven seas, U. S. O. clubs, and other places where
men in uniform congregated were in need, it was estimated, of
10,000,000 books to provide their personnel with adequate reading
matter of both technical and recreational sorts. Miss Mary Louise
Dinwiddie, assistant librarian of the Alderman Library of the University
of Virginia, served as director of the campaign in Virginia
during the first war year. Within two weeks after Pearl Harbor,
in advance of the opening of the drive, she had begun to make her
plans. Under her leadership a total of 36,956 volumes were collected
and forwarded through proper channels to servicemen, who
were ever hungry for something to read. Almost ten per cent of
these—3,169 books—were gathered at the Alderman Library alone.[66]

The Alderman Library also served the nation in an unpublicized
capacity which remained highly secret until enemy air raids were no
longer feared and which has not even yet been broadcast in full and
rich detail among the “now it can be told” stories of the war. In
panicky days of shock which followed Pearl Harbor irreplaceable
treasures of the Library of Congress were evacuated under the watchful
eyes of formidable guard details to five locations which were
thought to be safer from the possibility of enemy attack. More than
two and one half years later, when they were brought back to the District
of Columbia, the Librarian of Congress found himself fairly
bursting to break the news of a secret which a hundred or more
Charlottesville and University people had helped him to keep. So
eager was he to put on record his appreciation for indispensable cooperation
that he introduced the whole subject into his Annual Report
for the past fiscal year, which had not at the time gone to press,
rather than let it await its proper place in the Annual Report which
he should write later for the fiscal year then current. His account
of this evacuation omits mention of the multiple conferences, telephone
calls, and letters between members of his staff, on the one hand,
and Librarian Harry Clemons, University President John Lloyd
Newcomb, and other University officials, on the other. Nor did he

Miss Dinwiddie and an assistant sort Victory Book Campaign
volumes in the Alderman Library.

in a formal report indulge in what might have been colorful descriptions
of the vicissitudes of travel between Washington, D. C., and
Charlottesville, the midnight arrivals of guarded trucks which were
almost furtively unloaded before dawn at the library, and the special
provisions and adjustments which were made locally to permit the
storage of unopened packing cases, to accommodate workmen when
they needed to catch a few winks of sleep in the library building, or
to arrange scores of incidentals—some of them as humorous as they
were covert—which developed in the course of a very friendly and
mutually pleasing cooperation. Nor does he reveal that the enormous
manuscript collections entrusted to the University for dead storage
were supplemented by the working collection of millions of cards
which constitute the Union Catalog of the Library of Congress,
the most valuable single research tool in the nation, which, together
with its staff, was moved to new quarters in the Alderman Library
and continued to grow more priceless throughout the period of its
evacuation. But what the Librarian of Congress did say within
the restrictions of his formality reveals by implication something of
the atmosphere which surrounded all stages of this wartime removal
and which permeated the thinking of local people who were “in the
know” about the University's role as protector of an incalculable
portion of the nation's recorded heritage. What he wrote on this
subject is of sufficient local interest to warrant republication:

“The most important single fact about the recent history of the
collections of the Library of Congress is a fact which belongs properly
in the Annual Report to be written a year from now. Our
principal holdings, evacuated to five depositories in the interior of
the continent immediately after Pearl Harbor, were returned to Washington
in August and September of 1944, two to three months after
the landing on the Normandy coast. To wait for a year to signalize
this event would sacrifice historical interest to the dictatorship of the
calendar. Furthermore, those responsible for the transportation over
the Blue Ridge and over the Alleghanies of 4,789 cases of books and
manuscripts valued in uncountable millions of dollars should not be
obliged to wait until spring of the year 1946 to read in the official
report of the Librarian that their work was well done.

“The Keeper of the Collections, Alvin W. Kremer, his assistant,
Richard M. LaRoche, and their colleagues on the staff of the Library
and on its guard force, carried throughout this period a responsibility
as heavy, at least insofar as posterity is concerned, as that carried by
military and governmental officials in any field. It may well be
debated, now that the materials have been safely returned, whether
or not they should ever have been sent. As to that, it can only be
said that any man can be wise in retrospect and that problems of
this character have a very different look to those responsible and to

those not responsible for their solution. In any case, the original
move was made on the advice of the military authorities and with
the counsel of a committee of the responsible custodial officers of the
United States Government appointed for the 'Conservation of Cultural
Resources' belonging to the Government. The materials were
held at depositories approved by the military authorities, and it was
not until an opinion of the Joint Chiefs of Staff had been obtained
that the return to Washington of our greatest treasures was finally
ordered.

“The Library of Congress, and through the Library the people of
the United States, are lastingly indebted to the institutions which
freely and generously offered the use of storage space, which they
could have employed to advantage themselves, for the safeguarding
of our evacuated materials. During the period of evacuation reference
to the names and locations of these depositories was forbidden
under the code of voluntary censorship and by military regulation.
It is now possible to announce that they were: the University of
Virginia at Charlottesville, which permitted us to use valuable and
highly protected space in its Alderman Library, including the Treasure
Room of that Library, its Law Library and its School of Engineering;
Washington and Lee University at Lexington, which permitted
us to use not only stack areas, but rooms as well in its McCormick
Library; Virginia Military Institute, also at Lexington,
which provided large areas in its Preston Library; Denison University
at Granville, Ohio, which made available space in its Library,
in its Science and Life Building, and in its Chapel; and the United
States Bullion Depository at Fort Knox, where the Constitution of
the United States, the Declaration of Independence, the Magna Carta,
the Gutenberg Bible, the Articles of Confederation, the manuscripts
of the Gettysburg Address and the manuscript of Lincoln's Second
Inaugural were guarded day and night throughout the entire period
of their absence from Washington.

“No mere acknowledgment of indebtedness, and no mere words
of gratitude, can begin to express our sense of obligation to the officers
of these various institutions and to the librarians and custodians
in immediate charge of the occupied space. Their patient and uncomplaining
acceptance of the inevitable annoyances resulting from
the presence of our 24-hour guards in their buildings and our piled
up cases in their halls and stacks, speaks eloquently of their generosity,
their devotion, and—for no other word is wholly expressive—their
patriotism.' ”[67]

Prompted by the multiplicity of wartime appeals for foreign relief
and the wartime necessity of the most efficient possible type of
organization and operation in all local welfare work, the community
achieved midway through the struggle a unification of the formerly

numerous requests for charitable contributions. The Charlottesville
and Albemarle Community and War Fund was organized in the
summer of 1943. In its single annual solicitation for about a dozen
local health and welfare agencies and for the local share of all nationally
approved war relief services, as opposed to a score or more of
separate annual money raising campaigns, there was implicit an
obvious economy of time, energy, and money. Moreover, programs
of the local social service offices could be more closely coordinated,
and a broader understanding of community integration
evolved. And, in respect to the War Fund division of the new
organization, the uneven results of sporadic peaks of enthusiasm
and of special temporary efforts in behalf of one wartime charity or
another were eliminated by a carefully considered national apportionment
of all War Fund receipts among the U. S. O. and many
foreign relief organizations.[68]

In a Virginia War Fund meeting in Richmond on June 8, 1943,
State Senator John S. Battle, Dr. W. D. Haden, and Jack Rinehart
represented Charlottesville.[69] The War Fund was allotted $32,800
of the $73,685 goal of the first local Community and War Fund
campaign, which was oversubscribed by $6,164 in the autumn of
1943. Approximately $32,500 was given to the War Fund in each
of the next three years, which saw successive objectives of $73,369,
$80,369, and $76,375 exceeded by an average of about twenty-five
per cent.[70]

When these generous annual contributions are added to the many
indeterminable dollars which the people of Charlottesville and Albemarle
County had already donated to an incalculable number of
war relief projects of every possible nature and scope, one can be
pardoned for surprise that they did not themselves become objects
of the charity of others. An inherent humanitarianism, readily
touched by the plight of the world's unfortunates, seems to be the
only satisfactory explanation for purse strings loosened so freely in
an era of unprecedentedly high taxes and despite other inescapable
financial pressures.