Archival
Collections
World War II
ACIPCO Methodist Church Sunday
School Class
World War II Letters
(AR 1835)
This collection contains
letters exchanged between members of the American Cast
Iron Pipe Company Methodist Church Sunday school class
and members of the church’s congregation serving
during World War II.
Size: 1 box
Anselmo Antonio, Carmella
Papers
(AR 737)
Born in Sicily, Carmella
Anselmo Antonio immigrated to Birmingham in 1921 where
she taught in the public schools and taught English
language and citizenship classes to other immigrants.
She worked at the Bechtel-McCone aircraft facility in
Birmingham during World War II. The collection contains
correspondence, photographs, clippings and other
material relating to her life and her students.
Size: 2 boxes
Armes Family
Papers, 1904-1958
(AR 1199)
Correspondence,
financial records, writings and an unidentified diary.
The bulk of the material relates to Edmund Campion
Armes, brother of author and historian Ethel Armes (The
Story of Coal and Iron in Alabama), and includes
records from Armes’ years as an agent for
Jemison-Seibels Insurance Company and as a major in the
Army Air Corps during World War II.
Size: 1 box
Birmingham Public Library. Wylam
Branch
Wylam History Files, 1898-1967
(AR 324)
Wylam, Alabama, to the
west of Birmingham, originated as a mining town housing
employees of the nearby coal mines and steel mills. It
was incorporated in 1900. It later became part of the
City of Ensley and in 1910 was incorporated into the
City of Birmingham. The material in this collection was
compiled by librarians at the Wylam Branch Library of
the Birmingham Public Library. The first half of this
collection contains materials recounting the history of
several institutions and churches in the Wylam
community. The second half is devoted to material
relating to World War II. Most of the items are
photographs and newspaper clippings.
Brandino, Paul D. and Elizabeth K.
Brandino
Correspondence, 1943-1944 and
undated
(AR 1659)
Paul and Elizabeth
Brandino were a Birmingham, Alabama married couple.
Paul served in the United States Army during World War
II, and following the war Paul worked as
secretary-treasurer at Brandino Sales Company, which
dealt in “hardware specialties.” Elizabeth
worked as a clerk for the same company. This collection
contains 43 letters dated November 9, 1943 to January
15, 1944. All of the letters are from Elizabeth
Brandino to Paul Brandino, and deal with everyday life
in Birmingham during wartime. Elizabeth discusses
household chores, family life, and occasionally
mentions the difficulty of acquiring rationed goods
like gasoline and chocolate. Some picture of
Paul’s experiences, especially during basic
training, can be gleaned from Elizabeth’s
references to his letters to her.
Childers, James Saxon
Papers, 1918-1965
(AR 1120)
Writer and publisher
James Saxon Childers was born in Norwood, Alabama in
1899. He graduated from Oberlin College in 1920 and
attended Oxford University as a Rhodes Scholar. From
1925 to 1942 he was a professor of literature and
creative writing at Birmingham-Southern College as well
as a columnist and book reviewer for the Birmingham
News. In 1942 Childers married Maurine White and soon
left Birmingham to serve as an Air Force intelligence
officer in World War II. Upon his return from the war
he and Maurine lived in Chapel Hill, North Carolina
(1947-1951) and Atlanta, Georgia. He was an editor at
the Atlanta Journal (1951-1957); a lecturer for the
U.S. Department of State in the Far and Middle East
(1958-1959); and president of Tupper and Love book
publishers after 1959. Childers authored more than
twenty books including A Novel About a White Man
and a Black Man in the Deep South (Farrar and Rinehart,
1936), the biography Erskine Ramsay, His Life and
Achievements (Cartwright and Ewing, 1942), the travel
book Sailing South American Skies (Farrar and Rinehart,
1936), and The Nation on the Flying Trapeze: The United
States as the People of the East See Us (David McKay
Company, 1960). James Saxon Childers died in Atlanta in
1965. The papers include family photographs, college
memorabilia, articles by and about Childers and
articles of interest to him, personal and business
correspondence, financial records, copies of most of
the books authored by Childers, galley and page proofs
for The Nation on the Flying Trapeeze, and ephemera
from Childers’ travels abroad. The correspondence
includes letters from Arthur Conan Doyle, Harry S.
Truman, and Flannery O’Connor.
Size: 7 boxes
Chitwood, Lynn
Correspondence, 1942-1943
(AR 391)
This collection contains
68 letters written by Lynn Chitwood, a college student,
to her boyfriend Elbert Hamilton while Hamilton was
undergoing military training. Hamilton served in the
82nd Airborn Division and was killed in July 1944 in
Europe. In her letters, which are often amusing,
Chitwood discusses family and friends, her social life
and the war.
Size: 2 boxes
Fairview Elementary School
Original Poems by Students, 1942
(AR 957)
These poems relating to
World War II were written by students at Fairview
Elementary School in the western section of Birmingham
in April 1942.
Size: 1 box
Grafman, Milton L.
Papers, 1907 – 1995
(AR 1758)
Milton L. Grafman was
born in 1907, in Washington, D.C., and grew up in
Pittsburgh. He graduated from the University of
Cincinnati, earned a Doctor of Divinity Degree from
Hebrew Union College, and was ordained in 1933 as rabbi
of Temple Adath Israel in Lexington, Kentucky. Grafman
came to Temple Emanu-El in Birmingham in 1941. He was
active in the civic and community life of Birmingham.
Grafman was a founder of the organization Spastic Aid
of Alabama and helped establish the Institute for
Christian Clergy, an organization established to
promote understanding and cooperation between Jewish
and Christian ministers. Grafman was one of the eight
white clergymen that Martin Luther King, Jr. famously
replied to in his “Letter from Birmingham
Jail.” Though a racial moderate, Grafman was
grouped with racial reactionaries and received death
threats and hate mail for the rest of his life. Grafman
retired from Temple Emanu-El in 1975and died in 1995,
in Birmingham. This collection contains files kept by
Grafman during his tenure as rabbi at Temple Emanu-El,
including copies of The Serviceman, a newsletter
published by Grafman for members of the Temple Emanu-El
congregation serving in World War II. Funeral sermon
files contain biographical information on members of
the congregation who died during Grafman’s
tenure. Subject files contain correspondence, clippings
and other material relating to Jewish life,
particularly in Alabama. Office files consist of
correspondence, clippings, photographs and other items
concerning civil rights controversies of the 1960s and
1970s, the nation of Israel, the administration of
Temple Emanu-El, and Jewish education, organizations,
and practices.
Size: 8 boxes
Hamilton, Elbert
Papers, 1942-1947
(AR 651)
This collection contains
letters written to Hamilton, a young Army paratrooper
stationed in the United States, including one letter
from Normandy written shortly after the D-Day invasion.
Size: 1 box
Hamilton, Frank
Correspondence, 1938-1943
(AR 375)
The letters in this
collection were written by two servicemen named Frank
Hamilton, one the uncle of the other. Both served in
the Army during World War II, and the younger Hamilton
was shot down and killed over occupied France in 1944.
Size: 1 box
Hulsey, Walter J. and Robina T.
Hulsey
Correspondence, 1942-1945 and
undated
(AR 1930)
Walter Hulsey was born
in 1903 in Alabama. He was a graduate of the Colorado
School of Mines and served in the Marines during World
War II. He and Robina Hulsey were married in March of
1938. After the war, he was a sales engineer at Jeffrey
Manufacturing Company. He and Robina lived in the same
home on 52 Fairway Drive in Mountain Brook for most of
their married life. He died in 1974. Robina was born in
1905 and died at the age of 97 in 2002. Robina was a
member of the Church of the Advent choir and was
encouraged by Walter to take singing lessons throughout
his letters. The letters are filled with every day
stories from a Marine in love and he often chides
Robina for not writing him more often.
Size: 3 boxes
