I really shouldn’t be here
My grandparents met during college, waiting out the rain under a bus shelter. Neither of them should have been there. Not just at the bus shelter, but not at the University of Georgia in the 1930s. Yet, there Nelle Hayes and Louis Abramsky were.
It was uncommon for women, especially from my grandmother’s small town, rural Georgia background, to attend college. She was actually the third girl in the family, and in the end, all five sisters in her family would go to school, all at the University of Georgia.
While Jewish immigrants put a high priority on education, college was not a standard expectation until the 1950s and later. The rate of second-generation Jewish immigrants attending college was relatively high at the time, they didn’t usually head hundreds of miles from home. My grandpa, whose family lived in Brooklyn, New York, was offered a football scholarship at Old Miss. but with no family nearby he had to pass on it. With family in Atlanta, and an ROTC scholarship, the University of Georgia (UGA) was possible. He tried out for football as a walk-on and made the team. After being used as a tackling dummy for the first string he walked away from football.
He was a good student and active throughout his time in college. I know more about what he did because the activities of men at UGA during this time were regularly in the school newspaper, including Dean’s List announcements. Women seem to only have been listed as the dates to various parties and dances, or if they were part of a group hosting an event. Their academic successes, such as the grades to make the Dean’s List, were not included.
In elementary school, we did reports on life at home during World War II. We were expected to interview our grandparents (okay, our grandmothers) about life on the homefront. My grandmother told me about traveling by train across the US to see my grandpa in San Fransico. My memory is fuzzy, and I remember her story sounding like he was shipping out from there, but I don’t remember anything about him fighting in the Pacific. We have pictures of him in Italy. I had always assumed his military career began with the war, but he spent his entire career in the army, beginning with ROTC during college.
Check out the full blog with more content over on Substack. Subscribe and get the latest post in your inbox!