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On the morning of Tuesday, June 6, 1944, people woke up to the news that the long-anticipated D-Day invasion had begun.
Few were awake to hear the initial broadcast that came over the airwaves in the middle of the night.
Shortly after 3 a.m. Emmett Rossiter, founder of the bank of Hartington, was awakened by a phone call from his daughter in Mississippi.
‘’Dad, this is Connie. The invasion has started. I thought you would want to know.”
‘’Good,” said Rossiter. ‘’No!“ replied Connie, ‘’It’s terrible.“ ‘’Yes, it is terrible,“ agreed Rossiter. “Five years of killing men, women, and children. Five years spent destroying lives and property. Five years accumulating debts that will enslave the nations of this world for generations to come. And all to what purpose and what end?“ he wrote in the Cedar County News of June 8. “We dare not pursue that further on this D-Day. We leave it for you to ponder.’; In Cedar County, as in other areas across the country, everything came to a standstill as people pondered the news of the invasion.
Many remained glued to their radio sets, listening for the latest news flashes. Within a day or so, things were back to a semblance of normal – except for families who had boys fighting on the beaches and in the hedgerows of Normandy.
There were other things to worry about back at home. Between the first of March and the middle of May more than 11 inches of rain had fallen in the Laurel vicinity. The first two weeks of June brought another five inches and on the Saturday before D-Day, a cloudburst dumped 2.5 inches in less than 90 minutes.
Country roads were impassible and the Fourth Street ditch overflowed sending water over the streets and foot bridges and into the low-lying property south of the ditch. Water also ran over Highway 20 in the west part of town and cascaded down Main Street.
Baker Creek, south of town, was reported to be two miles wide in places. Several families who lived south of the creek were stuck in town until the water subsided.
Another problem was finding teachers to fill vacancies in the high schools.
The school system faces the greatest crisis in history, said H. R. Baukhage in his syndicated column. Since Pearl Harbor, American schools have lost 200,000 teachers to the draft and many others to higher paying jobs in defense plants.
According to Baukhage, the average teacher salary in 1944 was $1550 a year and many teachers received less than that. A large number of schools were forced to close and thousands more were so overcrowded that effective teaching was impossible, he said.
The Fifth War Bond drive got underway on June 12. The goal was to raise $16 billion to fund the war. Cedar County’s share was set at $563,000.
Congressman Karl Stefan informed constituents that due to a severe shortage of cotton, manufacturers were unable to meet the demand for women’s dresses. Stefan noted while American women were unable to buy cotton dresses, more than 6 million had been shipped to women overseas. An increase in the price of farm land was leading to concern that another depression might follow the war as had happened after the last one. Although the price of farm land had increased an average of 17% between April 1943 and April 1944 more farms changed hands than at any time since World War I. During that war, farm income rose from $6 billion in 1914 to $14.5 billion in 1919. The average price of farm land increased from $40 an acre to $70 over the same period .
Then, during the 1920s, land prices crashed from $70 an acre to $28. The result was the Great Depression. Before it was over more than one third of the nation’s six million farms had been foreclosed.
