As World War I raged, men and women from all walks of life in Framingham served their country and community at home and abroad in ways that revealed the courage and character of small town America. The lives – and sometimes deaths – of seven diverse residents provide personal snapshots of the war’s impact on Framingham in “An American Town in World War I,” a thoughtful and moving exhibit at the Framingham History Center.
FRAMINGHAM – As World War I raged, men and women from all walks of life in Framingham served their country and community at home and abroad in ways that revealed the courage and character of small town America.
The lives – and sometimes deaths – of seven diverse residents provide personal snapshots of the war’s impact on Framingham in “An American Town in World War I,” a thoughtful and moving exhibit at the Framingham History Center.
“I definitely hope the exhibit makes visitors think about those men and women who served in different ways,” said curator Stacen Goldman, who organized the exhibit. “I hope people reflect critically on the war and what it meant to those people.”
James J. McGrath left his family and job in Saxonville to enlist eight days after the U.S. entered the war to serve and die on the Western Front.
After her sweetheart joined the Army, Kathryn “Cassie” Harrington founded the Military Girls Club with her two sisters to send “comfort boxes” packed with sweets, treats and letters from home to locals serving overseas.
Feisty suffragette Louise Parker Mayo picketed the White House and was arrested for charging President Woodrow Wilson with denying millions of women their democratic right to vote.
On display through April 30, three days after Memorial Day, “An American Town” fuses the familiar faces of a family album with the solemnity of a memorial to all who served and sacrificed for their country.
Celebrating the 100th anniversary of the Armistice of Nov. 11, 1918, this innovative exhibit uses 68 artifacts including a German machine gun, uniforms, photos, letters and badges from the FHC’s collection to provide an engaging portrait of one American town’s experience in “the War to End All Wars.”
Goldman, who earned bachelor’s and master’s degrees in history, said, “It is absolutely appropriate” for the Framingham History Center to host an exhibit about residents’ roles in a war that ended a century ago.
“Each of the seven people people represents a different set of circumstances as individuals who tell a national story,” she said.
Throughout the exhibit, broader topics, such as the war’s origins, the influenza pandemic and the “Lost Generation,” are explained through artifacts, images and wall text.
Visitors will see photos of local Victory Gardens to save food for the troops, Liberty Bonds sold by locals to raise money for the war effort and crepe paper bandages made by Dennison Manufacturing Company.
In a subtle touch, a row of artificial poppies, suggested by FHC Assistant Director Laura Staglioa, evoke the red flowers symbolizing the war dead in John McCrae’s popular poem, “In Flanders Field.”
Organizing the exhibit, Goldman said she did not focus on “military history” but used the experiences of five noncombatants to give visitors an inclusive picture of the war’s impact on Framingham in its hospitals, factories and homes of those left behind.
Goldman suggested visitors begin the exhibit with the section on the most enigmatic of the Framingham participants, Gordon Ware, a Harvard graduate from “an old Framingham family” who joined the American Ambulance Corps six months before the U.S. declared war on Germany.
While examining the center’s archives last year, she found a box inaccurately labeled “George Ware” that contained a serendipitous treasure likely unseen for decades – a 160-page memoir of Ware’s service as a volunteer driver and 100 original photographs of his experiences.
In wry unpublished musings titled “What Did You Do in the Great War, Father,” Ware never postured heroically, writing he had enlisted “because I had no job and saw no prospect of obtaining one”
“There was no quixotic urge to render the world safe for Democracy,” Ware wrote. “The motive was a thoroughly selfish one coming from need of occupation and distraction for the moment.”
A full length photo shows a handsome uniformed man with a neat mustache and whimsical smile.
Ware served in “the Forgotten Front” in the Balkans and later on the Western Front, receiving a chest wound that likely contributed to his death in Paris after the war at age 34.
His witty yet observant quotes provide a curious contrast to the later heroic posturing of a more famous ambulance driver, novelist Ernest Hemingway, and put a face on an intriguing man whose memories should not fade away.
On a printed Honor Roll naming 33 Framingham residents who “gave up their lives in the great cause,” nurse Margaret Sullivan was the only woman.
One of seven children of Irish immigrants, Sullivan had graduated Framingham Nursing School and was working as a nurse at Massachusetts Eye and Ear Infirmary when she enlisted in the Army Nurses Corps in 1918 and was assigned to the hospital at Camp Devens in Ayer.
After arriving at the camp at the height of the influenza pandemic, which killed an estimated 50 million people worldwide, Sullivan died in August, the first nurse to die at the base where more than 800 people later died.
Visitors might be surprised to learn that native son Arthur “Ray” Brooks was one of about 50 American aviators to earn the title of “ace” for shooting down six German planes between July and October, 1918.
A graduate of Framingham High School, where he edited the yearbook, the MIT graduate enlisted shortly after the U.S. entered the war and flew with the U.S. Air Service, attaining the rank of captain.
A photo of Brooks shows a fine-featured man with a direct gaze next to his quote: “It is normal and natural for me to fly, like I never stopped flying since the day I was born.”
In combat, he flew a SPAD biplane, earning the Distinguished Service Cross for his six aerial kills, including two German Fokkers on the same day.
Goldman noted Brooks lived to be 95 and is buried in the St. Stephens cemetery on Fenwick Street and his restored biplane is displayed at the National Air and Space Museum in Washington, D.C.
Goldman’s least predictable resident, Henry S. Dennison, grandson of the founder of the Southside factory that fueled the town’s economy, may have actually had the broadest impact on Framingham.
Progressive yet practical, he augmented former employee’s military wages, brought women into the work force and sacrificed profits to support the war effort.
Center Executive Director Annie Murphy stressed visitors with little interest in military history will encounter real people coping, often heroically, with war’s terrible impact.
“I believe the exhibit presents the humanity of a huge historical event in a small town,” she said. “I hope people will see it because they’ll be seeing a true slice of Framingham history.”