It was a muggy July evening in 1946 when five women whose husbands had died in World War II traveled to Hyde Park, New York, to meet with another war widow, Eleanor Roosevelt. Mrs. Roosevelt wrote in her news column, My Day, that they, “…came for supper, and then went to Poughkeepsie the Lafayette Post of the American Legion had given them permission to use a room for a meeting. It was a small meeting, though the casualties among servicemen from Dutchess County were pretty high.” In fact, more than 175 men from Dutchess County alone were killed or MIA by 1945. The five women who met with Mrs. Roosevelt had grown from an original group of four widows who had first met together in Marie Jordan’s apartment on West 20th Street in New York City in 1945 to talk about how they might band together to support the needs of war widows and their children, and to participate in memorial and recognition ceremonies for the war dead. Their appeal to Mrs. Roosevelt to join with them after President Roosevelt’s death was auspicious. She became one of the original signers when the Gold Star Wives of America was chartered as a non-profit organization whose purpose was to do any and all things to benefit the spouses and children of persons who died in war or as a result of service connected illness. Today there are more than 9,000 active members of Gold Star Wives  and potentially 80,000 more survivors who are eligible for membership. It is not a group that one covets simply because of the very fact of how you become eligible. But, […]