It was May 1937 in Oshkosh, Wisconsin. The daily newspaper, the Oshkosh Northwestern, cost only 2 cents and was filled with news from across the world, from across the U.S., and from across Wisconsin. President Franklin Roosevelt was still virgorously pursuing solutions to the ongoing Great Depression, including an attemp to initiate his Social Security program and an effort to expand the Supreme Court. In society news, the notorious mistress of the former King Edward VIII of England, Mrs. Wallis Simpson, was given a divorce decree, leaving her free to marry the man who gave up his crown for love of her.
Across the country, labor union activity kept the business world in an uproar. In Hollywood, members of the Screen Actors Guild, led by President Robert Montgomery, joined moving-making craft unions in a strike. In Kenosha, Wisconsin, members of the A.F. of L. and the C.I.O. bickered amongst themselves, in spite of a declaration of an "immediate need" for labor cooperation.
Across the country, labor union activity kept the business world in an uproar. In Hollywood, members of the Screen Actors Guild, led by President Robert Montgomery, joined moving-making craft unions in a strike. In Kenosha, Wisconsin, members of the A.F. of L. and the C.I.O. bickered amongst themselves, in spite of a declaration of an "immediate need" for labor cooperation.
In the Algoma Street Methodist Church in Oshkosh, the Reverend Harry Illingworth joined a young couple in marriage--Walter Charles Stratton and Fern Susan Gumz.
The groom was 27 years old, the son of Ellison Stratton and Marie Draves Stratton. He was born in Coloma, Wisconsin, a small farming community in neighboring Waushara County, and had moved to Oshkosh as a teenager. He was a graduate of Oshkosh High School, and remained in the city even after his parents had left Oshkosh to move to Berlin in Green Lake County, Wisconsin.
