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From: "Liz Engle" <>
Subject: [ROOTS-L] Anne & Helen SMITH, US Navy nurses, 1943
Date: Sun, 29 Jan 2006 11:38:49 -0800

Hi everyone:

In 1943 in Seattle a call went out to citizens with spare bedrooms to offer
them to service men and women who were in transit to the battlefields of the
South Pacific. My grandparents, David and Nell CHILD, volunteered their
attic bedroom and for a time became hosts to two Navy nurses – sisters Anne
and Helen SMITH.

I was 15 years old at the time and I remember these two serious young women
who were with my grandparents for a few weeks before their ship left for the
south seas on October 27, 1943. The only record I have today of their stay
are the formal portraits they left with the Childs. So far as I know, the
Childs never heard from them again, and we always wondered if they survived
the war.

Their formal photographs are in my grandmother’s album. They are in their
twenties, both in Navy uniform; they look enough alike to be twins, although
I never heard that they were. I don’t even know where in the US they came
from – Midwest, East Coast? Where?

I would certainly like more information about Anne and Helen Smith, to add
to the Child’s pages in our “Family Book”, and would appreciate clues to
establishing their identity. I know that Rootsweb is probably not the forum
of choice in this regard, but it is a start.

Thanks for any thoughts you can send my way.

Elizabeth Goodfellow Engle
Edmonds, Washington

This thread:

• [ROOTS-L] Anne & Helen SMITH, US Navy nurses, 1943 by "Liz Engle" <>