“If I had stayed in the States for the duration of the war.... I couldn’t have felt as if I were doing all I could in the war effort and although I’m not one of these fellows who is a fanatic on the subject, I think that any body my age and with my health should be over here.” Thus wrote Oliver Wolfe from the South Pacific in a letter of 25 August 1943 to his wife, Marie, at home in Columbia, South Carolina. Wolfe was an officer serving in the 25th Statistical Control Unit, which was attached to the 13th Army Air Force, also known as “the Jungle Air Force” for its frequent relocations among the islands north of Australia and New Guinea.

Lieutenant Oliver Jordan Wolfe (1919-2002) married Marie Virginia Ulmer (b. 1921) on 7 January 1943, forming a partnership that would span nearly sixty years. The demands of military service allowed the couple only a few months of wedded life together prior to Oliver’s deployment to the South Pacific for twenty-five months. Letters exchanged between Oliver, Marie, and a large network of family and friends preserve a daily record of life in the South Pacific and on the homefront in Columbia and elsewhere during the Second World War. Following his return to civilian life in 1945, Oliver founded The Wolfe Company, a successful real estate business that after more than sixty years continues to prosper in family hands.

This collection of six and a quarter linear feet of letters and other personal papers, 1921-1953, and ca. 560 photographs, 1885-1950, chiefly documents the training and active duty experiences of this future civic and business leader as a young officer and those of his bride. Letters discuss the daily challenges and uncertainty of life during wartime, the excitement of travel, the exploration of new regions, and reflect a number of social and technological changes experienced by soldiers and civilians alike during the 1940s.

In his letters Oliver talks about the nightly fireworks provided by Japanese bombing raids, sharing an island with giant lizards three feet long, regular requests for more film for his camera, and his longing to return and resume life at home with his wife. Letters from Marie Wolfe and others in the United States provide insight into the changes and developments of World War II on both the military and social fronts. Along with Oliver’s explanations of military life - as detailed as censors would allow - the collection suggests how shortages, rationing, and security concerns impacted the daily life of the communities and the economy of South Carolina and of the United States.

Marie Ulmer Wolfe attended Mary Baldwin College for two years and graduated from University of South Carolina in 1941. Marie and her sister Judy (b.1924) were the children of Jack Melton Ulmer (1888-1967) and Bessie Brawley Ulmer (1895-1966). The Ulmers, who ran a successful real estate business, and later, a savings and loan, in Columbia, lived on Heyward Street in the Shandon neighborhood. Marie’s large circle of friends and relatives included several cousins, as her mother was one of thirteen siblings.

A son of Oliver William Wolfe (b. 1890) and Lelia “Dot” Jordan Wolfe (b. 1897), Oliver Wolfe completed Columbia High School in 1935 and graduated in 1939 from USC, where he earned varsity letters in baseball and basketball. On 11 December 1941, four days after the bombing of Pearl Harbor, the twenty-two-year-old enlisted in the United States Army at Fort Jackson.

Several weeks later, Oliver wrote to Marie to report his arrival at Sheppard Field (Wichita Falls, Texas) in a letter of 6 January 1942, adding that “Giles,” a former teacher from Columbia High School, had escorted Oliver and the other soldiers from Fort Jackson to Texas, where the men encountered single-digit temperatures and snow as well as evidence of the magnitude of the rapid expansion of the armed forces as the country prepared for war. Writing in his characteristic style, both upbeat and specific, Oliver reported that although initial construction had begun less than seven months previously, Sheppard Field was said to be “the biggest air mechanics school in the world.” Upon completion, the base would house and train an anticipated capacity of “26,000 men under normal conditions” and include “over 700 buildings covering 620 acres of ground and a total sum of $18,000,000 will have been spent?”

Like most of his fellow soldiers, Oliver was not reared in a military family, but the optimistic tone of his letters demonstrates his dedication to the soldier’s life and the esprit de corps shared by the troops at Sheppard Field. In a 6 January 1942 letter, Oliver reports to Marie, “We get up at 5:30 A.M. every morning and only have about 30 minutes rest until around 5:30 every afternoon. We drilled about two hours this afternoon and, believe it or not, it seemed more like fun than work.... just about everybody here has the same attitude when it comes to drilling and working. There is very little griping and quibbling but most everybody wants to do his part because the greater majority of these fellows only want to stay in the army for the duration and therefore all want the duration to be as short as possible.”

By late January 1942, Oliver’s letters originate from Brookley Field (Mobile, Alabama), following his assignment to the Repair Squadron of the 7th Air Depot Group. In spite of a rigorous daily routine of twenty-mile hikes and hours of drill, the men still found energy for practical jokes. In a letter of 13 April 1942, Oliver reported, “I’ll probably have to look for my bed for 30 minutes or so before I can go to sleep. We have a game going on at the barracks, the object of the game being to see who can take a bed apart and hide it so that it will be hard to find and I’ve got a feeling that this is my night because I did a fair job on Hillery’s last night.”

In a later letter, 31 May 1942, Oliver included two aluminum coins crafted with a hole in the center, stamped with words “sales tax token” and quipped, “I am enclosing another example of the rationing program. It seems as if the tax program is being changed in more ways than one, doesn’t it?”

In June 1942, Oliver enjoyed a ten-day furlough at home in Columbia, S.C., prior to reporting for his next assignment, the Army Air Force Officer Candidate School in Miami Beach, Florida. On 27 June 1942, he wrote to report his arrival, praising the appearance of the city, which he rated “the most beautiful place I’ve ever seen,” but reporting some difficulty adjusting to the more posh surroundings, which included beds, “we’re staying in the James Hotel which is rather small but it’s new and as nice as can be....[and] after sleeping in army cots for so long, it’s rather hard to learn how to sleep comfortably again.” Although the hotel offered more shelter than the tents to which he had grown familiar, these accommodations were far from luxurious, partially due to blackout restrictions, as noted in a letter, 1 July 1942, “we don’t have any lights at all nor any hot water.” While in Miami Beach, Oliver’s test scores and performance earned him a position as one of only 150 men from among the 4800-member class of 1942 selected to attend the Army Air Force Statistical School which was held at Harvard Business School. Upon successful completion of the six week program, Oliver would be commissioned as a second lieutenant.

In Boston, Oliver’s routine included more free time, even allowing a trip to Nantucket, as noted in a letter, 7 August 1942, in which he described for Marie his impressions of Harvard and Cambridge. By this time a veteran of months of intense training, Oliver also noted differ¬ences among the Army and Navy men enrolled at Harvard, as the Navy recruits on campus at the time arrived directly from civilian life and knew little of military discipline or protocol.

Oliver thrived in this program, as might be expected of a soldier whose letters frequently included such specific details of facts and figures. Graduating on 11 September 1942, he accepted a commission as second lieutenant serving in the 8th Statistical Control Unit, Knollwood Field, Southern Pines, North Carolina (18 and 25 September 1942), where his duties required the compiling of all reports from the squad¬rons and districts and transmitting the data to the Director of Statistical Control in Washington. Although grateful to be stationed close to home, Oliver expressed surprise at the social life he encountered among his fellow officers at Knollwood Field. A letter of 27 September 1942 includes an account of his first party at the officers’ club, “These people around here really believe in their whiskey....Everybody and his brother and sister seem to love the stuff around here.”

Oliver’s statistical work allowed access to an early computer. In a letter dated 30 September 1942, he enclosed an artifact from this exotic new technology: a punch card coded with Marie’s name and address. “We got in some new IBM equipment today and as all that equipment is in my section, I wanted to learn how to operate it,” he wrote. “You can see from the enclosed card I made a little progress. The holes in the card spell out the printing at the top and the printing is done by merely inserting the card in the Interpreter machine and it prints what is punched in the cards in about 2 seconds.”

Following the couple’s marriage in Columbia, S.C., in January 1943, Marie joined her husband in Pinehurst, North Carolina. The bride’s family shared flowers from the wedding with persons and institutions where they could be enjoyed by others, as evidenced by several thank you notes, including one from T.E. Cumings, Superintendent of the Confederate Home of South Carolina, written on letterhead stationery with Confederate flags, and another from the former president of Benedict College, the Rev. Clarence B. Antisdel and his wife, Gertrude (9 and 10 June 1943).

Oliver and Marie counted themselves lucky to secure an apartment near the base in Pinehurst, N.C. Several letters dating to 1942 suggest the severity of the wartime housing situation for dependent families and civilians alike, particularly in regions near rapidly growing military installations. A friend of Marie’s named Eleanor described the situation near the Marine base in Jacksonville, North Carolina, in a letter dated 7 May 1942, “Butch is attached to the 3rd Battalion, First Marines at the New River, N.C., base - and if this isn’t an experience to tell the grandchildren we’ll never have one.”

Those who remained in civilian life also wrote to express concern with the housing situation and its implications for the economy in certain sectors. A letter to Oliver Wolfe, 20 November 1942, from R.B. Richard¬son, officer and director of First Federal Savings and Loan of Spartanburg, South Carolina, lamented the dire straits in which he found his company. “Wolfe, business has absolutely gone to the dickens, there just isn’t any being done. Unless the gov’t let’s folks start building & buying & renting like they please, before long, the Savings and Loan Associa¬tion will be in the same boat as the Finance Companies. Well, we’re in it already....”

The challenges of setting up housekeeping in the face of wartime shortages are suggested in a series of letters exchanged during May 1943 between Marie in Pinehurst, North Carolina, and her mother in Columbia regarding efforts to locate a precious volume of rationing coupons apparently lost in the mail. When located among a bag of damaged mail, its discovery raised questions among authorities at the post office (19 May 1943).

In June 1943, the Army assigned Oliver and the 25th Statistical Control Unit to the 13th Air Force, triggering his deployment to the South Pacific. In early June 1943, Marie accompanied Oliver to Washington, D.C., en route to his deployment. This marked the last time the couple would see one another in person for more than two years. Letters from Oliver, 9-11 June 1943, discuss his trip across the United States and his brief stopover in San Francisco prior to departure for an undisclosed location.

Over the next two years, Marie and Oliver resumed their daily correspondence. His letters document the frequent island hopping of his unit as the war progressed. From June to December 1943, Oliver’s location is no more specific than “South Pacific” although his unit was known to be on the islands of Guadalcanal, Munda and Bougainville, based upon a commendation “for outstanding service in battle...[despite] experiencing frequent enemy attack.”

During 1944-1945, however, his datelines revealed such locations as Guadalcanal; New Hebrides (January 1944); Admiralty Islands (3 May 1944); New Guinea (19 September 1944); Dutch East Indies (late 1944); Sydney and elsewhere in Australia; Leyte, Manila, and elsewhere in the Philippines; and the Molucca Islands (mid-1945). Censors apparently relaxed somewhat as the fortunes of the Allies improved.

Oliver summarized his mileage in a letter written 2 January 1944 from the New Hebrides to Jack and Bessie Ulmer. “A couple days ago I made up a list of all the places that I have been since I’ve been out here and I’ve been to 7 different places and have accumulated better than 45 hours in the air since Sept. 25th and traveled over 6800 miles. I’ve also made a trip by boat of about 1500 miles.” In a similar vein, another letter, that of 4 July 1943, suggests Oliver’s characteristic sense of adventure and an appreciation of the significance of his military experience - “we are getting an education out here that we couldn’t possibly buy and it will be something that we will never forget when we get back to the States. It sure will be fun to go almost anywhere in the States after the War and run into people that you know from out here.”

One such acquaintance whom Oliver met while in the South Pacific later won election to the United States Congress. “We have a Marine Captain here, Joe McCarthy from Wisconsin, who has been drafted to run for the U.S. Senatorship from that state and he is really a swell guy. A couple of the fellows have put up a big sign over their tent with ‘McCarthy for U.S. Senator’ and when we had a boiled egg for Easter, there was some sort of phrase on each of the eggs such as ‘McCarthy, the people’s choice’ etc. on each one. Mc was a judge in civilian life and the scuttlebutt is that he will probably be elected” (15 April 1944).

Despite universal stories of the ease with which soldiers mailed coconuts and other exotica home to the United States during World War II, this collection suggests that outbound mail to servicemen proved more problematic. Marie apologized for the delay and expressed her surprise to discover that The State newspaper would not mail Oliver’s subscription to the South Pacific without a written request in hand signed by the soldier himself (30 July 1943). A letter from Bessie Ulmer to her son-in-law acknowledges this rule. “Wish we could send you other things you could enjoy. The Post Office is so funny. If there is anything we can send you that you want, be sure and write a request for it so the Post Office will let us mail it” (16 February 1944).

Back in the United States, the summer of 1943 provided Marie plenty of news to supply her husband with interesting letters relating news as well as the humor and popular culture of the day. Marie headed to New York City in June to attend commencement ceremonies for her sister, Judy, who would graduate from Briarcliff Junior College in Westchester County, N.Y. Marie, her friend Gladys, and later Judy enjoyed several days of touring and recreation, which continued when the Ulmers arrived several days later. Letters from this family visit in Manhattan, 16-20 June 1943, include accounts of Marie dining at the Yale Club and using the “ladies’ entrance,” as well as visits to the Stork Club and other celebrated nightspots where they encountered such famed New Yorkers as John Jacob Astor and Frank Sinatra.

After attending the new musical “Oklahoma!,” followed by a late night at the Copacabana, Marie wrote to Oliver, “Mother and Daddy wore us out. We shopped with Mother all yesterday and Daddy kept us out until five o’clock this morning. Did have fun though” (19 June 1943). Marie expressed surprise following a visit to a live performance of the Lucky Strike Hit Parade at the appearance of a crooner who had recently joined the program. “The Lucky Strike broadcast was very good. I didn’t realize until it started that Frank Sinatra was on it.... We went to Riobamba [Room].... Frank Sinatra was at a table next to us. The ‘Riobamba’ is supposed to be one of the places that started him on the road to popularity” (20 June 1943).

Both Marie and Judy returned to live at their parents’ home in Columbia in mid-summer 1943. Marie, who had formerly worked in their real estate office and taught typing and bookkeeping at Draughn’s Business College in Columbia after finishing a business course there, took a new job at USC. A number of letters in the collection talk about women joining the workforce. In one dated 13 April 1942, Oliver commented on Marie’s enjoyment of her office work and added, “I knew you would like working once you started at it.... It just seems to get in the blood, doesn’t it?” And in her letter of 12 August 1943, Marie spoke favorably of her work at the University, noting that “I’m on my own just about, and I like that.”

Even mothers with small children managed to take classes in various fields to assist in the war effort. Gwendolyn Wolfe, Oliver’s sister-in-law and the mother of a small child, completed a class in mechanics. On 28 September 1942 she wrote, “I finish my airplane engine course next week and if I pass I can get a rating (civil service) as a junior engine inspector.” Another correspondent of Marie’s, identified in her letter only as Mary, wrote from Norfolk, Virginia, on 14 March 1942 while “on the clock” and included a joke parodying the aid program that provided socks, scarves, and other cold weather garments for soldiers in the United Kingdom. “Have you heard any ‘Knitting for Britain’ jokes?,” she queried. “‘I went out riding in a car. I will admit I went too far. Now what I did, I ain’t admitting - but what I’m knitting ain’t for Britain!’.... Hope you don’t let anyone read these notes I send you (on government paper - and time).”

Even during her work week, Marie and her family frequently spent summer evenings at a rustic country house owned by the Ulmers on a tract located south of Fort Jackson. Although it lacked electricity, the property with its several small lakes for swimming offered a welcome retreat from the heat of downtown Columbia. This property came to be known to several generations of Ulmer and Wolfe family members as “Lazy Acres” and was later developed as the neighborhood called “Reflections.” During the summer of 1943, it came to be known as a popular destination for the officers and enlisted men of Fort Jackson as well.

In several letters, Marie reports to Oliver on the use of the grounds and lakes by soldiers and their families. “The army is having maneuvers all around here. Two soldiers took us riding all through the woods in a jeep. We had them and two others for supper. They seemed to enjoy it a lot. In fact, they are still here....After having about 200 come to the door for water last week, they got the commanding officer to put the house off limits, but they still come. The main trouble is that they don’t know when to leave once you have them in or do something for them.... places around Columbia to go swimming are few and soldiers on maneuvers discovered this place so Sunday there were two cars full of soldiers with their wives, babies and a picnic lunch” (24 July 1943).

Other interactions between civilians and military personnel noted in this collection surpass those reported by the Ulmer family both in brevity and the resulting level of alarm among the civilians. Robert “Bob” B. Richardson reported in a letter of 18 March 1943 how his brother contacted the family in Spartanburg when passing through the area. “Lee... got his commission & got married on the same day & is flying a Bomber at the Greenville [South Carolina]...base now. Has been at Myrtle Beach bombing practice for ten days. He gets over pretty often to see us. Flew over Sunday at 12 o’clock on the way to Myrtle Beach & tried to take the roof off the house. I’m ashamed to tell the neighbors who it was. They thought the Japs had come.”

However, not all such apparent “attacks” were false alarms. Another letter, written while Marie was a guest at a beach house on the Atlantic, reports an explosion beyond the horizon. “There was a big boom out in the ocean today that made the houses on the beach vibrate. Then...a lot of black smoke. Everyone is still wondering what it was!” (9 August 1944). That same day, Oliver wrote describing the first of many nightly Japanese bombing raids. His letter uses the slang term, “Charlie” to describe an Asian enemy, an epithet presumably based upon the “Charlie Chan” character created by author Earl Derr Biggers. “We have had quite a bit of excitement since I wrote you last night. Up until now we have had a very peaceful and quiet life but in the early hours this morning it changed very suddenly. Sometime early in the morning we heard the alarm go off for the red alert but none of us in the tent thought much of it as we didn’t think that it would be anything. However, we finally decided to get up and just about the time that we got out of bed we heard a plane. I thought that it was one of ours taking off and I had just said that to Charley Kelsey who is in the same tent as I when I heard a whssssh, whsssh and then I knew that it wasn’t ours. I told Charley so and started running towards the nearest foxhole. I knew that it was a bomb and rather than try to make the hole, I hit the ground about the same time that a terrific explosion went off about 110 yards from us.... I think that I was about as scared last night as any time since I have been over here because I knew that if ‘Charlie’ dropped a string of bombs that the next one would hit in just about our vicinity. When nothing happened in a few seconds though I got up....I think that all of us were a little shaky as we could see where the bomb had hit and was burning itself out” (9 October 1944).

After almost two months of these nightly visits by enemy aircraft, particularly during the full moon, Oliver wrote of the toll taken on everyone’s rest, noting that “We are still getting very little sleep and with the moon as bright as it is now, there isn’t much hope of catching up any for another ten days or so. We used to think that the moon was beautiful out here but are getting to the point now that we don’t even like to see it come up” (27 November 1944).

Another weapon of the Japanese, the radio, proved less successful in its efforts to demoralize the troops. Oliver reported on the unlikely popularity among the men of the English language broadcasts intended to undermine morale of Allied troops. He explained that the music was the appeal of these broadcasts. “Almost forgot to tell you that we have heard Radio Tokyo the last couple of nights since we have had Johnny’s radio. Last night they started to play a piece and the announcer said...‘why don’t you fellows go on back home and have a good time instead of sweating around in the jungles while your wife is playing around back home...’ all their records are old, but the programs are really good. They try and antagonize our personnel by cracks such as the above and some that get even better, but we all sit around and enjoy it no end. As one of the fellows said the other night it’s the only program on the air that doesn’t take up most of the time with advertisements and then the rest of the time asking you to buy war bonds” (21 January 1944).

Promoted to the rank of major in December 1944, Oliver’s schedule continued to include extensive travels. By May of 1945, Oliver wrote from Manila and Leyte, and elsewhere in the Philippines, impressed with the destructive capacity of modern warfare in an urban environ¬ment. Describing the aftermath of the Allies’ return to the Philippines, he mentions unconditional surrender by the Germans and comments on local conditions: “This is really some place. It’s so good to see civilization again. Honey, this is the first time that I’ve seen what could happen to a big city and it’s really awful. I’ve seen Manila and it’s completely gutted. There are some shells of buildings left standing in some places but that’s about as much as I can say for them. Beautiful homes have been completely devastated” (7 May 1945).

In late June 1945, Oliver left the South Pacific to enjoy a long awaited furlough from his tropical island paradise. With the surrender of Japan in August 1945, the Army did not require that Oliver return to duty. Wolfe’s close friend Charles P. Kelsey used the civilian honorific when he wrote on 17 September 1945 from Leyte in the Philippines to congratulate “Mr. O.J. Wolfe” on his civilian status and his plans to work in real estate. “We were all pleased and happy for you when we learned that the army had decided to dispense with your services. And with two city blocks of property, bud, you should have the city in the palm of your hand....Well, fella, after you left...word came to pack up and make ready for a move to Okinawa. We were going to fight the war again! Then peace came, and spoiled all the plans....”

Only a few items in the collection post-date the end of war in the Pacific. After Oliver’s return to Columbia, he founded The Oliver Wolfe Real Estate and Insurance Company in September 1945, and soon thereafter Oliver and Marie Wolfe began a baby boom of their own, as their family grew to include seven children.

Although the collection includes only scattered letters written from the European theater, letters written by Oliver and Marie typically relay news and rumor of events in Europe. One of these is a false report of German surrender received by Oliver, 19 September 1944, in New Guinea via the teletype machine that predated by months the actual Victory in Europe day, 8 May 1945. However, the Allies broadcast news of D-Day with no delay, and both Oliver and Marie wrote to describe its coverage on 6 June 1944. In Columbia, S.C., Marie reported, “I just don’t know where to begin after all the invasion news today. I am wondering what will have happened by the time you receive this letter. Everyone has been very thoughtful all day, and the churches have been packed.” Oliver received the news in the evening. “We heard the good news while waiting for the movie to start last night. It was at 7:05 and the band was playing before the show started when the announcer broke in and asked for everybody’s attention. I had a feeling that it was going to be the announcement of the invasion and when he did announce it, you should have heard the noise. All of us have been trying to determine what 11,000 planes would be like. Maybe things will go well and this mess will be over in another year or so. We stayed up most of the night getting short wave broadcasts from nearly every place and that’s all that people have been talking about this morning.”

Two correspondents serving in Europe provide interesting descrip¬tions of conditions in Italy and Germany. A friend identified only as Barrett wrote to Oliver from southern Italy with his thoughts on Italian buildings, towns, and lifestyle, particularly the large families. “Every family seems to have about a half dozen bambinos,” he wrote on 2 July 1944, “and every third woman you see is on the way to having another one. Musso[lini] used to offer bonuses to women who produced big families, and we formerly had a waitress in our mess who was only about 25 and had already had 10 children. Her reward for that effort was a lifetime pass on the tramways and railroads. As far as we could make out she was so busy with the bambinos that she never had time to go anywhere on her pass so she kind of got the short end of the stick on that deal.”

George Kirksey wrote from London, lamenting the death of Ernie Pyle and commenting on German cities and soldiers observed firsthand. “Not so long ago I was in Germany with out 17th Airborne Division and got to see a lot of the country and what we are doing to it. The cities are really taking a pasting and some of the soldiers I saw couldn’t fight in the South Carolina home guard. Actually some of them had artificial limbs but even those guys are dangerous behind a machine gun” (18 April 1945).

This collection includes a number of letters exchanged between correspondents who had never met but who shared in common a friend or family member currently or formerly served with Oliver. Much like the phone call offering news of a loved one that soldiers of the day often promised to deliver while home on leave, these letters impart a striking level of honesty and frankness to have been sent to a virtual stranger.

Marie received one such letter, 16 March [1945], from Capt. W.C. Stevenson, who was visiting Lexington, Kentucky. He opted to write a letter conveying news of Oliver rather than to make the phone call he had promised. “When I left the Philippines last month, Ollie sent word...to be sure and call you. So naturally I intended doing so but it seems long distance calls are over so quickly and usually both parties think of things to say after the receiver has been put down. So I thought I would drop you a note instead but if this doesn’t suffice...write for any more information.”

Shirley Kelsey of Indiana corresponded with Marie in South Carolina and Oliver Wolfe in the South Pacific. Mrs. Kelsey’s husband, Charles, worked closely with Oliver and shared his tent in the Army. As she explained to Marie in one letter, 11 March 1945, since her husband frequently mentioned both Oliver and Marie in his letters, she thought they should get acquainted. In her friendly letter of introduction, written with witty, self-deprecating humor, Shirley discussed her interests, hobbies, sense of humor, and physical appearance - “people never say I’m pretty, if they want to be kind and stretch a point they say I’m ‘attractive’ (which can cover a multitude of sins!)”

Shirley’s letter to Oliver, [23 May 1945], took a more serious tone as she sought his advice in confidence, asking if her letters to her husband were causing him undue worry. Her recently widowed grandmother had suffered a nervous breakdown, which caused great concern and formed a frequent topic in her correspondence. This letter also references the government’s suggestion that Americans write only optimistic letters to loved ones serving in the military. “...you know I write Charley a lot of things when I’m blue and down in the mouth...that aren’t listed among the things that are cricket to write soldiers. Ollie, I want to know whether he worries about me or not....You see, I don’t want him to, and he says he doesn’t, but I’m still afraid maybe he does....”

A number of politically active families whose names and correspon¬dence appear in the collection include South Carolina Governor Olin D. Johnston and Sol Blatt, Jr., and his wife, Carolyn. The Ulmer family enjoyed the hospitality of Governor Johnston at Crescent Beach north of Myrtle Beach (3-17 July 1943); the Ulmers included Governor and Mrs. Johnston among fourteen guests at “Lazy Acres” (28 June 1943); Jack Ulmer sold a duplex rental property to Johnston (30 June 1943); and Marie assisted with Johnston’s campaign for the United States Congress - “Carolyn [Blatt] and I addressed 500 envelopes tonight for Governor Johnston’s campaign letters. That really isn’t an easy job. It’s tedious and tiresome but we got them done in record time” (5 July 1944). Marie’s letter of 26 July 1944 reports Olin Johnston’s election to the United States Senate. “Governor Johnston is our next senator. I haven’t seen the papers this morning but the last report last night was that he was 16,000 votes ahead of the votes of his opponents put together.... Think he beat “Cotton Ed” [long-time incumbent Ellison Durant Smith] by about 40,000 votes. Had a good time last night. Went up to the mansion and the headquarters at the hotel - very exciting. Didn’t leave the Mansion until 12:30. The Governor had come in then. He and Gladys were too tired I think to be very excited. They were very happy about the whole thing though. We sure do hate to see them leave Colum¬bia...but it is grand for the Johnstons.”

Visual materials include photographs, postcards, and a small selection of cabinets and original artwork. Oliver Wolfe took the majority of images during his basic training and while stationed in the South Pacific. Snapshots frequently illustrate an anecdote or event described in a letter. A scrapbook entitled “South Sees: It Couldn’t Last Forever: 25th Statistical Control Unit, Headquarters Thirteen Air Force in the Admiralty Islands, 1944,” spanning 1944-1945 was produced following relocation of the 25th from Guadalcanal to the Admiralty Islands and documents via detailed text and photographs the construction of “bures,” native-style thatched buildings which were much cooler than the men’s previous abode, regulation Army Quonset huts. Other photographs include group views of Oliver and fellow officers at Guadalcanal, [1943?], and Admiralty Islands, July 1944.

The collection includes several postcards of hotels in Florida and nightclubs in New York; letterhead stationery (some illustrated with military aircraft) and several regimental Christmas cards, including an example featuring the logo of the 44th Bomber Group, known as the “Flying Eight Balls.” The card features a color illustration of Santa Claus dressed in a brown flight suit riding a winged eight-ball attached to a bomb.

Photographs of a young Oliver Wolfe during the 1930s consist of 8 x 10 prints that suggest his athletic prowess and include images of church league, high school, and varsity college teams in Columbia. Several of these images include identifications of his team mates and such detailed information as positions played and scores for each game. One image, captioned “Tabernacle Baptist Basketball Ball Team. Champions of Sunday School League - 5 Dec. 1933-24 Feb. 1934,” pictures fifteen-year-old Oliver with his team mates and includes the team’s schedule and win-loss record.

Earlier images, 1885-1920s, chiefly consist of Ulmer and Brawley family prints. A photograph album, 1910s-1920s, holds images of Jack Ulmer and Bessie Brawley Ulmer taken during the time of their courtship, including one labeled “single blessedness”; images of youthful Jack Ulmer in the uniform of the United States Army during the First World War; and later images with young daughters Marie and Judy when the Ulmer family lived in Lake Alfred, Florida.

Present also are specimens of letterhead stationery from the Columbia businesses of both the Ulmer and Wolfe families. Several 1937 letters of the Ulmer family real estate business, Jack Ulmer, Inc., feature an illustration of the ornate Palmetto Building behind a private home in the foreground. A letter dated 28 September 1942 promotes the contracting business of Oliver’s brother, “W.C. Wolfe: contracting in painting, paper hanging and caulking.”

A small amount of original art work documents the creative output of talented soldiers who made extra money illustrating cards and letters using ink or water color. The collection includes several sketches and cartoons on envelopes and paper, several Easter greeting cards, and a 7 February 1945 card illustrated with a watercolor image of a thatched jungle hut titled, “Ollie’s home, Mulucca [Island].”

Ephemera includes a news clipping announcing Marie Ulmer as the winner in the “Popular Baby Contest” (9 April 1922, Columbia Record); Oliver’s USC photo identification for “first semester, 1938-1939...For admission to all home athletic games”; a ticket from the Clemson-Carolina game, 23 October 1941; two printed booklets celebrating victory in Japan, Club 13 Jungle Air Force [1945] (featuring images of the men in the Molucca Islands and elsewhere) and Jungle Air Force Celebrates V-J (1945), published by the Public Relations Office; and tickets, a program, and passes for Bessie Ulmer to attend the 1949 inauguration of President Harry Truman.