Shop's century-old posters celebrate our wartime alliances
The gift shop in the Old Warrington School House is loaded with curios and antiques. There’s also something of particular interest to wartime historians on the second floor. Lance Mervin of the Langhorne Historical Society suggested I take a look. The timing seemed right being it’s the anniversary of the armistice that ended World War I. In that global conflict and the one to follow Russians were our dear allies. Imagine that!
Stuart Ballard’s shop is on busy Bristol Road just above Route 611. It’s one of five preserved schoolhouses that served the township between the 1700s and as late as 1951 when the township was mostly farmland. Stuart was 25 when he purchased the oldest of them in 1963.
“My dad said, ‘Well, what are you going to use it for? Sell gifts?’ I went to some auctions and decided I didn’t want to sell gifts. But things kept coming to me and before long I had a gift shop.” Shoppers these days can feast on a cornucopia of Tiffany lamps, greeting cards, paintings, posters, knickknacks and furnishings that seem to fill every inch of the school built in 1765 and topped by a belfry that once summoned kids to class.
My purpose was to see what was upstairs. Stuart, now in his 80s, led the way, climbing a stairwell lined with century-old photos of the school’s graduating classes. The stairs opened to what Lance described: dozens of World War I and II posters designed to support our troops and allies including the Russians. For me, the display brought back early memories. My father fought in World War II. On leave mid-war due to battle damage to his destroyer, he married Mom. I was conceived on their honeymoon, becoming his “goodbye baby”. I would not see him until two years had passed and I turned 1. By then he had survived many horrific battles including torpedoing a Japanese battleship firing heavy guns to try and destroy his onrushing USS Halford (DD-480) in Suragao Strait in the Philippines.
All the while, Mom and Dad’s younger sister Bennie maintained a constant vigil at home in the San Francisco Bay Area. The family purchased war bonds from the U.S. Treasury Department of the type portrayed on the Warrington posters. As one declares, “We Russians have shown the Nazi invader how brave men can defend their country . . . Together with you, we shall bring victory to all the decent people of the world.”
The two wars tolled an incredible 125 million military deaths. Today marks the 103rd anniversary of the armistice ending World War I. In four weeks it will be the 80th anniversary of the attack on Pearl Harbor on Dec. 7, 1941 that brought the U.S. into World War II. Mom and Dad rarely discussed that war. But as the years rolled on, Dad opened up at neighborhood parties at our house in the San Joaquin Valley where most men were veterans. Though past my bedtime, I’d sneak into the hallway to hear tales of valor that gave me an appreciation of what Dad endured.
The colorful posters of that era displayed on the overhead of Stuart’s second floor once encouraged sale of war bonds, public loans to the government to be repaid with interest. The program dates to 1812 when Congress authorized them to be sold to rich financiers. That raised $11 million to help fund the War of 1812 when Britain tried to topple the new American republic. In World War I and II, the bonds went public as Liberty Loans. The government hired famous artists to design them and enlisted movie and stage personalities to drum up support in nationwide rallies.
A few weeks ago, my Aunt Bennie from her ranch in Oregon, described the effort when she attended public school. “We were encouraged to bring a quarter to school every week to put a marker in our war bond booklet. When you got so many markers, you got a war bond. Depending on how many markers you had, you got a $25 or $50 bond. While in high school during the war, we had bond drives, where we would give out books with higher marker spaces. Fifty cents a week.”
Bennie married my Uncle David Fry in 1946, a combat pilot who survived being shot down and captured in Germany during the war. “After the war, everybody had U. S. Bonds, taken out forever,” Bennie told me. “Do you realize that when your uncle retired, they sent him all of his bonds? We bought our 15 acres next door with those bonds – $22,000!”
Back in Warrington, mild mannered Stuart Ballard maintains the old school as an icon in which to view history and secure gifts to take home. “I like to keep busy,” he smiled.
Sources include world war death tolls in “Darkest Hours” by Jay Robert Nash published in 1976, and “A Study of Stephen Girard’s Bank, 1812-1831" by Donald R. Adams published in 1978 and detailing bonds to finance the War of 1812. The Old Warrington School House Gift Shop is located at 2524 Bristol Road. Call 215-343-2171 for information.
Carl LaVO is the author of four books and numerous articles for the Naval Institute Press at the U.S. Naval Academy in Annapolis, Maryland. He can be reached at carllavo0@gmail.com
This article originally appeared on Bucks County Courier Times: Century-old posters in Warrington shop celebrate our wartime alliances.
