TAGS:<\/strong> William Blair, Bill Blair, WWII letters, William Hayes, farms, farming, cows, dairy, war, military training, work program<\/p>\n ABOUT THE LETTERS<\/strong><\/p>\n The letters of Bill Blair<\/strong> are addressed to William Hayes who was farm manager at Pine Mountain from 1937 until 1953. Hayes assumed the responsibilities for the farm shortly before his graduation from high school at Pine Mountain in 1937. Bill Blair\u00a0was\u00a0one of many students who worked on the farm crew at the School and under farmer Hayes. Bill Blair left in 1944 to join the war effort and was in training when he corresponded with Hayes. The letters contain much information about the farm program at the School, the disciplines learned in the program and the application of those disciplines in military service.<\/p>\n The letters also capture the difficult years of World War II\u00a0and the pressure it placed on the School and on the families who had children attending Pine Mountain. It records the anxiety of young men going to war and the interruption in the educational processes for young men at the School as well as the interruption in their assistance of their families.<\/p>\n Of particular interest is the recounting of\u00a0community\u00a0challenges\u00a0brought on by the war. Many families saw their young men go off to war leaving the family household to manage farming, food, health issues and other major survival events. In one of his letters\u00a0Bill Blair describes the breeding of a steer that the farmer provided the Blair family to get them through the war years. Today, “Heifer International<\/a>,” a\u00a0world wide\u00a0organization that provides assistance to families in need, follows the same practice but on a larger scale. It is heartening to know that Pine Mountain used some of the same strategies employed by this later organization to assist their local community in\u00a0need.<\/p>\n The correspondence includes letters from September 10, 1944 until June 6, 1945 (D-DAY)<\/strong>. Also included is a letter from Bill Blair dated August 31, 2002, following the Pine Mountain 2002 Homecoming. The letter describes the correspondence.\u00a0\u00a0<\/p>\n Two additional letters are included in the Blair letters that are not written by Blair but by classmates who shared the war experience. The two students are NOEL V. WELLS and “DAN” [BUCK JONES]. A note on the reverse of the Jones letter remembers that he was from Coxton, Kentucky, the mining town where Bill Hayes was from and was an usher at the wedding of Fern and Bill and a “swimming buddy” of Bill’s. [The note is in the hand of Fern Hayes, Bill Hayes’ wife.]<\/p>\n
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\nGALLERY: BILL BLAIR WWII Letters<\/h3>\n\n\t\t