With our country's 250th Anniversary right around the corner, it's time to revisit the patriotic offerings I was proud to pen for adults and middle-school students.
We Bought A WWII Bomber: The Untold Story of a Michigan High School, a B-17 Bomber and The Blue Ridge Parkway, is the incredible true story of what students from a high school in Grand Rapids, Michigan, did in 1943, during WWII. They participated in the "Buy a Bomber" campaign and within eight weeks time, they instigated War Bond & Defense Stamp sales of over $375,000 which enabled them to buy, name and christen a B-17 Bomber and send it off to war.
I became interested in this story because it happened at the high school I attended many years later. There was a huge poster of the bomber on the wall in the school bookstore where I worked during school breaks. I knew something about the story, all of us did, but as a teen, I really didn't care about it. Jump ahead fifty-years to a presentation given at the reunion where the bomber story was mentioned. It peaked the interest of one of my classmates to find the bomber that was purchased. You see, on April 6, 1943, students had gathered at the local airport to dedicate the plane. It flew off with all their hopes and dreams that it would fight the definitive battle and bring their fathers, uncles, and brothers home and they never knew what happened to it! My classmate found that it had crashed in Meadows of Dan, Virginia, less than three hours from where I live.
My classmate called me and asked me to find out the whole story. I was able to verify that it was our school's bomber which opened up a whole new side of the story.
She Started It All, is an historical fiction version of the nonfiction bomber story as told above, written for middle-school students. Even though the true bomber story is about what school-aged students did, I thought it would be fun to change it all into fiction. Set in a middle-school in the city near where the real B-17 bomber crashed, the WWII history reports of two students, one male and one female, collide in a surprising way when they discover they were reporting on the exact same airplane.
When both books are used together in a classroom, they provide students with an excellent example how an author turns nonfiction into fiction.
When Duty Called Even Grandma Had To Go, tells 2nd Lt. Dianah Kwiatkowski's story of enlisting in the Army Reserves as a nurse, at forty-seven years of age and within two months of enlisting, being sent off to serve in The Persian Gulf War. This decision turned into a life-altering experience.
Hidden Casualties: Battles On The Home Front, shares Sgt. Sara Raye's experience serving her country as an Army Reserves Nurse in The Persian Gulf War and coming home to discover her ex-husband had stolen custody of their three children while she was gone. Her battle to get them back would involve the military in two unprecendented moves and ultimately result in a change in enlistment requirements for single parents.
These two memoirs came about in a strange way. In November of 1991, a few days after voting, I received a telephone call from 2nd Lt. Kwiatkowski telling me that someone in line in front of her waiting to vote, overheard her saying she was a veteran of the Persian Gulf War and couldn't find someone to write her memoirs. That stranger turned around and said, "Excuse me. You need to call Sandra Warren, she lives in Strongsville. Look her up in the book."
When the call came from 2nd Lt. Kwiatkowski, my immediate reaction was, "I don't write memoirs! I write children's books!" The lieutenant then begged me to let her come talk to me. She said that "God told her to call me!" Now how could I turn down a request like that? We met and the rest is history.
A few weeks after starting the Lieutenant's book, she came to me and said, "There's a Sergeant in my troop who served with me in the Persian Gulf, who has a story that needs to be told. Can I tell her to call you?" I said, "yes," and once again, as the saying goes, the rest is history.
Both books were completed using interviews with each military nurse, their bosses and colleagues in uniform. Meeting both brave nurses and writing their memoirs opened my eyes to life in the military, the challenges and the joys, and increased my admiration for all who serve, ten-fold. Those memoirs, along with the story of the patriotism shown during WWII, made me more proud to be an American than ever before.
Thank the brave men and women who give their ALL in defense of our freedom! Always remember, FREEDOM ISN'T FREE!
Sandra Warren
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The books mentioned above are available on Amazon. If you should read one of them, please share your honest likes and/or dislikes on Goodreads and Amazon. Thanks again!
www.sandrawarren.com or www.arliebooks.com
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