March Meeting - Women's History Month!

Susie Dent sent me the following information about our meeting for March. We'd love to have a good group for this meeting! Please plan to attend - visitors are welcome!

" This month's program is in observance of Women's History Month. We will meet at 6 p.m.
Thursday, March 26 in the Helen Foster Auditorium at the Lee County Library, Tupelo, MS.

Mrs. Alice Ruth Chastain will present a program on her life experiences and her memories of internment in a Japanese prisoner of war camp in Manilla, Phillipines, during World War II. She has authored a book "Pioneer Girl" which will be available after the program and outside the library building. We aren't allowed to sell anything inside the library building.

Mrs. Chastain is a professor of nursing having earned her PhD in nursing from Union University School of Nursing in Jackson, TN. She was born of missionary parents in Manila, Philippines shortly before WWII and was interned with her family in Santa Tomas Internment Camp until liberated in 1945. She has four children and nine grandchildren. She lives in Saltillo, MS. (Note: she was my nursing instructor in 1980 at ICC). She recently made a trip to China to the sites where her parents were missionaries and to where her father is buried.

Just a little serendipity to mention here: one of our Historical Society's members Faye Moreland called me this morning. Her brother was one of the soldiers who opened the gates of Santo Tomas for General McArthur to enter and liberate the camp. It was likely that Mrs. Chastain saw him then since she remembers when McArthur entered the camp. She was around 4 years old at the time.

Ya'll come if you can make it. Susie Dent, Northeast Mississippi Historical and Genealogical Society ... nems.hgs@gmail.com"