Dispatches from the Kentucky Homefront
Bernice Mitchell and the Burnside Gazette, 1941-1947
By: Sarah-Jane Poindexter
Special Collections Assistant
The Bernice Mitchell Papers provide a detailed look at small-town life in Kentucky during World War II. This recently catalogued collection documents the effort of a woman in Burnside, KY, to keep the town’s ‘boys’ at war connected with the home community.
Originally located on the Cumberland River in Pulaski County, Burnside was known for its lumber industry and was a center for railroad and steamboat shipping. The town was relocated in 1952 with the construction of the Wolf Creek Dam and the creation of Lake Cumberland. The Mitchell papers include one cubic foot of correspondence, newsletters, photographs and clippings related to the town of Burnside during World War II before it came to reside under the waters of Lake Cumberland.
Bernice Mitchell’s family moved to Burnside when she was 9 years old. After graduating from the local high school in 1922, Mitchell continued to live at home with her widowed mother and worked much of her life as a bookkeeper and stenographer at a local lumber yard. During World War II, Mitchell rallied the Burnside community to come together to rigorously support their “boys” abroad and in the spring of 1942 helped to form the Burnside Home Front. The club maintained a roll of enlisted Pulaski County residents and distributed their names among the members. Each member “adopted” a “war-son”, often being assigned an individual with whom they were not personally acquainted. The members pledged to write their adoptee weekly, to enclose copies or clippings of the local newspaper and to remember the serviceman’s birthday.
In addition to her involvement with the Burnside Home Front, Mitchell devoted much of her personal time to producing her own weekly newsletter, the Burnside Gazette, which she wrote and mailed to all Burnsiders serving in the war. Mitchell
believed they needed to be in “constant touch with the more permanent things” of life “when their world is upside down, and for many, death a constant companion.” Her sympathy for the servicemen and her “understanding of their loneliness” inspired her work. From 1941 to 1947, the Burnside Gazette chronicled town news and gossip as well as provided updates on various soldiers’ deployment and well-being. With anecdotes, jokes, poems and prayers written along with the local update, Mitchell’s newsletters were more than informative. The newsletters helped the soldiers keep up with the whereabouts of their deployed townspeople, stay connected to their community and to know that they were continually in Burnsiders’ hearts and minds.
With an aim to inform and entertain, the tone of the Burnside Gazette was newsy and humorous. For instance, on Sept. 7, 1942 Mitchell writes, “Last week 10 lives were endangered right on Main Street. Oscar Fitzgerald’s truck went over the fill in front of his own house … the new fence he had made of cross ties held the car on its side instead of letting it turn completely over. The other 9 lives belonged to Tom Dyer’s cat. A truck hit and injured him, but the last I heard he was expected to recover.” At other times Mitchell’s tone is bossy, perhaps reflecting her spinster status in the community. She regularly reminds the servicemen to write their families, “It isn’t the length of your letter that matters so much as just the assurance that even one sentence gives, they will understand if you don’t have time to write long letters.” Notably, the letters capture Mitchell’s good-natured disregard for social mores which is particularly striking in light of her clear dedication to and compassion for the Burnside community. In a post script from the Burnside Gazette dated May 22, 1944, Mitchell amusingly confided to her readers, “P.S. Ssh! I sent my brother copies of some of my letters and now find that he has been shocked at my freedom of speech! He thinks some of my stories are decidedly off color for a maiden lady of my age and position! Also that I relate entirely too much gossip! In fact I gather that he is fearful that I will be put in the pokey for some of my remarks! Maybe so –”
Mitchell’s dedication to the Burnside Gazette and the Burnside Home Front produced considerable interest by the media. When the editor of The Commonwealth contacted her about writing a piece on her work with the Burnside Home Front, Mitchell was happy to provide information about the organization and for the opportunity to encourage others to participate but specifically asked that she be given no publicity. Later, the public relations office at Fort Riley, KS contacted Mitchell for a story about the Burnside Gazette. A Burnsider stationed at the Fort received the newsletters and shared them with his non-Burnside friends. The newsletters were so well received and created such a stir of appreciation
among the servicemen that they eventually came to the attention of the public relations office. Again, Mitchell responded with a request for “no publicity” but went on to say “maybe my reasons for avoiding publicity have been selfish, so if the activities of our community can be any inspiration or incentive to other communities, then by all means write your news item.” Following the war, Mitchell, encouraged by a former recipient of the Burnside Gazette, submitted a sample of her newsletters to a publisher to be considered for publication. The outcome of this effort is unknown. What is clear, however, is that the Bernice Mitchell Papers provide researchers with a rich account of the Kentucky home front during WWII and the unique voice of a woman who worked hard to capture it.
This timely collection resonates as we consider our current wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. How much correspondence is being saved? What forms will this communication take and how will we care for it?
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