LTHS and the impact of World War II (Part 1, through 1943)

• The following is part of an ongoing series of articles in celebration of Libertyville High School's 100th anniversary.

With the demand for military personnel so high in the World War II years, well over half of the late 1930s and early 1940s, Libertyville Township High School male students served in our Armed Forces. The Drops of Ink (DOI, the student newspaper) knew a war was brewing in the fall of 1939. There were several editorials over the next year urging the students to oppose the U.S. getting involved in a war. But in the DOI of Dec. 15, 1941, a week after the Pearl Harbor attack, the writers knew things were going to be seriously different; that the student body needed to get behind our country's war efforts. The DOI used the editorial page for the next several years to encourage LTHS students to buy war bonds and stamps to back the USA's war efforts. By the winter of 1942, coach Art Bergstrom announced there would be a change in the physical education classes. The emphasis would change from games to physical conditioning, as he knew he would be preparing students for military duty. The first negative report from the war came to LTHS in February 1942. The USS Houston was sunk in the Java Sea by the Japanese. Carl Williams (Class of 1940) was on the USS Houston. Of the 1,008 on board, Carl was one of the 350 that survived the sinking. All of the survivors spent the rest of World War II in a Japanese prison camp, finally liberated at the end of the war (think the movie "Unbroken"), nearly half died before the end of the war. Williams survived and re-enlisted in the Korean and Vietnam Wars. Several LTHS students enlisted or were drafted before graduation. Two of those joining the war effort before graduations were Michael Beddla and Clement Wrast, a football player through his junior year. They lost their lives in 1942, less than a year after enlisting. There was wartime rationing of several products, including gasoline and rubber. The Northeast Conference did not have a conference schedule for the 1943 basketball and track seasons. The only opponents LTHS played were schools that could be reached by train. The North Shore train station on Garfield Road was an easy drop off for visiting teams. Three former LTHS students lost their lives in 1943. On Sept. 24, 1943, Helen Keller came to Libertyville in support of a War Bond rally held in the Brainerd gym. The rally was an overwhelming success in money raised. The Frank G. Hough Company of Libertyville was honored in 1943 for Excellence in War Production. The DOI stopped production for the 1943 school year but began publishing again for the 1943-44 school year.