Bobby Evans Mercer

  Barbara Evans Mercer "Bobby" Born January 6, 1920 in Akron Ohio Died September 13, 2023 at age 103 in Seattle, Washington Lt. Barbara Evans Mercer Bobby was born in Akron, Ohio. She trained as a nurse, and joined the Army Air Corps in 1943, stationed in Grand Island, Azores Islands, and Paris. Bobby made 63 trans-Atlantic flights to bring home wounded American Soldiers. On her first night in Grand Island, Bobby met Lt. Lyle Mercer, her husband to be. They reunited many times in Europe during the war, and finally married in 1945 at the American Cathedral in Paris. After service they made their home in Seattle, raised 3 children; Simone Mercer (Don Bothell), Marc Mercer, Michele Mercer, and two beloved grandchildren, Marlow Mercer, Freeman Mercer. Their shared wartime experiences led them to become life-long peace and justice activists. May Bobby know peace, harmony, laughter and love; qualities that she held dear. ~~~ In 1990, Bobby documented the story of her life and exper...

My earliest childhood memories begin at the age of 5. I lived in Bruceton Mills, West Virginia with my one and three year old brothers, my mother and father. I recall a summertime in which I went to Bible School, in the same two-room school where the older children of the hamlet were schooled in the winter. I couldn't wait to go to school so I really enjoyed this experience, even though I knew this class was not real schooling. We listened to Bible stories and were allowed to draw with real crayons, which I had never done before. We sang religious songs; I recall learning “Jesus Loves Me.” The class ran from 9 to 11 A.M for two weeks. Other recollections: playing at my grandparents' house which was large and old, had a porch running around two sides, low enough that one could jump to the ground. At a corner where two sides met there was a porch swing on which I spent hours playing. One could go sideways, pretending to be a train, back and forth as high as one dared. A perfect p...

My father was born in a small West Virginia town called Clifton in 1893. His grandfather had come to this country from Eban, Wales. They had left the Welsh mining country and looked for a similar area here - which was West Virginia. My father's father, John D. Evans, had several brothers and sisters. I only remember Uncle David and Aunt Florence; the others, I suppose, had died by this time. When still a small boy John D. injured his knee with an axe and thereafter had a stiff knee which forced him to walk on the toe of that foot. As he was thus crippled he was allowed to go to school until the eight grade, because his family figured he would not be able to do hard work like other boys in the family. Therefore he was apprenticed to a miller at an early age. My memory of my grandfather is good: he was about 5'8" tall, thin, had beautiful white hair. He had a white mustache that often had streaks of yellow in it, stained from spitting the tobacco he chewed. He had bright blu...

On January 6, 1920, I was born at the Akron City Hospital. Aunt Brownie, who never (had any children, was given the honor of naming me - Barbara Ann after the heroine of a book she had read. We lived with them until I was six months old.  John lost his job in the postwar recession but got another as a fireman on the Baltimore and Ohio railroad. The line's terminal was at Brownsville, PA so the family moved there. It was a small, dirty town situated mostly on hills on either side of the Monongahela River. John worked hard, stoking coal into the furnaces aboard the big trains, to make steam and run the steam engines. His shifts were 12 hours long. He was laid off when I was 1-1/2 years old.  My parents had no place to go so they went to live with his folks in Bruceton Mills. John D. had moved here in 1915 from Hazelton because it was a larger hamlet with more business. Next door to my grandparents there was a garage owned by Ted Dye, a mechanic married to my dad's stepsister, Ma...

I can remember when we got our first radio, a big old table model brand named a Fada. We were the first in the neighborhood to have a radio so we had lots of company to listen in. The adults listened to it in the evening, but we kids didn't use it much until we were in high school. I recall listening to the spooky "Inner Sanctum" one night when I was babysitting. I almost died of fright and never listened to it again. As the oldest I had to take care of my brothers a lot. I would take Jimmy with me wherever I went. In the evenings it was my job to get him ready for bed. I would wash him from the bathroom sink (we only took baths once a week). He would always have scratches and broken skin on his knees and would cry when I washed them. I used psychology though, telling him to close his eyes and guess which leg I was washing. When he said the left, and it had the scrape, I told him that I was washing his good leg, and vice versa. He seldom cried after that ruse but I did wa...

When I was about twelve my father lost his job - the depression was on. We lost our home and were able to move to a small house rent-free in exchange for work by my Dad. Many homes were being repossessed as people lost their jobs and an income. Dad would go out and paint and paper the houses so they could be placed on the market and sold again. He took me along to paste the wallpaper. On the days he wouldn't be working he would go job hunting - a useless search. He had to put cardboard in his shoes at night to plug up the holes in his soles. Uncle Herm had also lost his job so my Mom and Aunt Nell would bake bread, rolls and cakes, then Dad and Uncle Herm would go door-to-door trying to sell the baked goods. One day my Dad gave a spice cake in exchange for a woman's dog. We children were delighted, called the dog "Spicie." The women were furious. Finally, people didn't have money to buy baked goods so Aunt Nell and Uncle Herm went back to W. Va.  They still had th...

The summer I was 13 or 14, my cousin Evelyn also came to visit at Aunt Nell's, staying three or four weeks. She was two years older than me, a year older than Honey. She was the daughter of my father's brother, George. He died during the flu epidemic of 1918 when Evelyn was still a baby. Her brother, Harold, was two years older. They lived in Cleveland with their mother, Aunt Ruth and her husband(s), one at a time, but she had several spouses as I recall. Evelyn had a half-sister, Betty, and a half-brother, Denny (eventually Betty married my brother, Dick).  When Evelyn arrived we all decided to visit some relatives we had not met before. Aunt Florence and Uncle Josua Fike lived out in the country some 20 miles away. Evelyn knew them; their son, Clarence, a few years older, was a classmate of hers. They were cutting hay when we arrived and said we could help them. I helped rake the hay left in the field after the big hay bundles were picked up and placed in wagons. Honey and Ev...

My cousin, Jean Cunningham, had gone into nursing training at Philadelphia General Hospital and that kindled my desire to be a nurse. My father was very much opposed to my going into nursing. I guess he thought nurses were exposed to too much of the sordid side of life. Without his knowledge I took Latin and other required courses in high school, always had my Mother sign my grade cards. Bobby I made a lot of new friends in high school, the closest one being Juanita ("Squint") Rhulin. She lived with her divorced mother and brother about a mile from us. My father was very strict with me and I was not allowed to go out with boys. I'm sure he was afraid of what might happen to me, thinking of Honey, Faye and other girls who had married early. I had no desire to get married but was very independent and ambitious. I liked boys but they were not my whole life. I was never seriously involved with any boy during high school days although I had several boy friends. I planned to ha...

I graduated in June, 1938, the depression was still on and jobs were very scarce. I had to have some money if I planned to enter nursing training so I went job hunting. I had applied at Philadelphia General (where my cousin had dropped out before she had finished) and City Hospital in Akron. The Monday after graduation I answered one of the few ads in the newspaper's "help wanted" column. It was for housework and child care. The woman told me she had had 60 calls when she interviewed me. I got the job: six days a week from 6 A.M. to 10 P.M. The pay was $5 a week plus board and room. The Nelsons lived in a nice section of Akron, the west end area. She was a teacher and he was a commercial artist at the Firestone Rubber Co.  She was a very definite, precise and strict but fair person and I learned a lot from her. She made out a work schedule for me, showed me how she wanted everything done, from dusting furniture to washing clothes. I did all the cooking and again, she taug...

I answered the phone. "Bobby, I just opened your orders. ”You're to be stationed way out west, Nebraska, and I'm worried about Indians. Maybe you really shouldn't go into the military, dear." Mom's concepts of geography and history dated back to 1908 and she hadn't read anything later on the subjects.  My heart started to pound and I shrilled into the phone: "Mom, read me exactly what the orders say. Oh, my God, where is Grand Island, Nebraska?" I was too excited to say any more. Besides, I wanted to look up the place in my old geography book. When I found it on the map I realized that it was a long way from Akron, Ohio.  I daydreamed about what the town must look like, visions made up mostly from western movie and from reading The Last of the Mohicans. I thought of the adventures I had in prospect - half-afraid and yet excited about the prospects. I knew of no one that had seen way out west. I had attended a friend's wedding outside of Chica...

My gosh, this was the old west - a small building and nothing else. It looked like the end of the earth to me. I walked to the depot and the only person there was the station master. My mouth was dry; did I really want to be here. I asked where the base was and how I could get there. "Just sit on the bench there and someone will pick you up soon," he told me. About 45 minutes later an enlisted man came in and said: "Hey you, you going to the base? Yes, I'm in the Army Nurses Air Corps," I told him proudly. He said nothing but picked up my bag and motioned for me to follow him.  A small car, which I later learned was called a Jeep, was parked nearby and I got in with him. It was a hot, dry and dusty seven mile drive to the base. I didn’t mind the driver not talking because I was interested in my surroundings - so flat, brown and without trees.  The Jeep pulled up to a long wooden building and the driver muttered "there's the admission building." He ...

I worked the day shift at the hospital for the first month. It was quite different from civilian nursing. Not only because all patients were men but because patients did their own personal hygiene - baths, making their own beds and taking dirty linen to the laundry. Mostly the nurses passed out pills, supervised the orderlies in ward duties and cleaning. I found out that the military really believed in the old adage "Cleanliness is next to Godliness". It seems that was the number one priority.  Every Saturday morning the head nurse and chief medical officer would don white gloves and go on an inspection tour - checking bed rails, window sills and the tops of doors. God help you if they found any dirt.- We also taught nursing skills and some health classes to the orderlies (medical corpsmen). Since I had had classes in physical therapy, I was assigned to setting up a small room with rehabilitating equipment. I did massage and taught exercises to some of the accident cases. Mos...