Wilmette Public Library Local History Digital Collection

Rhea Saul Adler (1906-1990) oral history

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Track 8: Track 8
Transcription: Track 8 RA: And so, but every day they were at Vatmann Park in the summertime to play. And every program at that time was supported by tax dollars and could be because there were so few people in the community. I think at the time we came here, it was not above 10,000. Somewhere in that vicinity. RF: [Indistinct]. 29,000. It has doubled. Tripled. Tripled. RA: Tripled, right, practically, in the time I've been here. And the community has. We would go to the Ridge, and then from there on out, almost, except for Indian Hill Estates had been developed before the Depression, but then we felt we had country. And we drove back and forth, of course, because our parents lived there. So that, now, we drive well across the Fox River before we feel that we've hit rural area. Many, many people who work out of O'Hare have their own planes and fly back and forth. Many of the pilots live out on acreage in DeKalb County and McHenry County. And, uh, so this . . . RF: I know, we passed somewhere, and they had not only a garage but they also had a hangar for planes. RA: Oh, many of the farmers in my hometown, even when I was . . . Well, mostly seeing it from the time I left there, about is the time when they started stretching out. But during WWII, we had blackouts in Wilmette. And, a blackout meant that you couldn't, if you had lights on in a house when the men came around for inspection, and they could see from the outside, even a sliver of light coming between the blinds and the wall, you'd be scored for it and penalized. I don't know what the penalty was because I never got a citation. And we had many coupon books for sugar, for meat. RF: There was rationing. RA: Rationing during that time. And we had to . . . That was a community service. Most of the service came through the League of Women Voters. On the Joint Committee for Recreation, I believe I represented the League because I had been active in, what was then, the Social Welfare Department. So, all of these things fell within my category, so that I helped to issue ration books for sugar and for meat. RF: Most of these things were staffed by volunteers, then. This was a . . . RA: Community people. They were never paid. They were always community volunteers. And this was a time when everybody seemed to want to be helpful to the community, and the community was aware of its individual supporters, both volunteers and tax-payers. And there was an intimacy about it. I know, my butcher came to be enrolled for the draft. And I had been buying meat from him for quite some time, and I was signing him up. And I hadn't realized he was that young. I thought he was thirty-five or more, because thirty-five, I think, was the cut-off point. And my husband had wanted to join the Navy because he was in the dispensable [?]. That was at the time when he start . . . he had, by that time, gotten his CPA in night school and so he had been doing CPA work, or accounting work, previous to that time, anyway. But he tried to join the Navy in an area where he felt he had some competency. They refused him, though, because he was, by that time, thirty-five. But they did tell him that he had to get out, he must not have been thirty-five, as yet, because they told him if he stayed in the jewelry business that he would be called. And so he started looking around, and . . . I forget what his first . . .; Fleischer, Regina
, Interviewer; Adler, Rhea Saul, 1906-1990
, Interviewee; Barnett, Amanda
, Transcriber
Media Type: Audio; Text
Item Type: Audiocassettes
Description: Interview of Rhea Adler by Regina Fleischer at 401 3rd Street, Wilmette, IL, in 1985.
Notes: Photograph of the first public library in Wilmette, Illinois
Place of Publication: Wilmette, Illinois
Date of Original: About 1985
Date Of Event: About 1985
Subject(s): Libraries
Oral histories
Wilmette Public Library
Personal Name(s): Adler, Rhea Saul
Language of Item: English
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