Sepia Saturday: Hospitalman 3rd Class

Sepia Saturday challenges bloggers to share family history through old photographs.

This week’s Sepia Saturday photo prompt features the kitchen of a hospital train.  Hospital train?  That’s a foreign concept to me, but I do have a TRAINed nurse.  (HA HA HA HA -- I kill me! Yeah, I'm here through the weekend.)

Janet Basham Meines
1929 - 1997

Janet Louise Basham was my mother’s cousin.  She was the older daughter of my grandmother’s sister Rosalind Mae Rucker and Larry Dalton Basham.  Janet was born July 10, 1929, in Roanoke, Virginia, and graduated from William Fleming High School in 1947.  

Janet Louise Basham 1947
scanned from William Fleming HS yearbook
The Colonel
available on Ancestry.com

As many yearbook staffs tend to do, quotes were selected for each senior.  Next to Janet’s photo was this gem:  “Thou shalt not wash dishes.”   In the Class Last Will & Testament, Janet left her bubblegum to another student, Jack Baldwin. 

Typical teenager!

Janet Louise Basham Meines
photo courtesy of her daughter
(name withheld for privacy)

Sometime between graduation and marriage, Janet joined the Navy as a WAVE and became a nurse, specifically Hospitalman 3^rd class.  


That is probably where she met her husband, Clarence “Clix” Meines.

Newly-Wed Pair Expected for Stay at Bride’s Home

A former Roanoker, Miss Janet Louise Basham, Hospitalman 3^rd Class, WAVE, was married July 24 [1950] to Clarence Haines Meines, Jr., Hospital Corpsman, USN, in the chapel of the US Naval Hospital, St. Alban’s, Long Island, New York.

Both will be discharged from the Navy this week and will arrive in Roanoke Saturday to visit Mrs. Meines’ parents, Mr. and Mrs. Larry D. Basham.

Mr. Meines of Paterson, NJ, is the son of Mr. and Mrs. Clarence Haines Meines.

The ceremony was performed at 4 p.m. and Chaplain J. T. Embry officiated.

Given in marriage by her father, the bride wore a ballerina length dress of white organdy and lace over taffeta with a fingertip veil and lace headband.  Her bouquet was of white carnations.

The maid of honor and only attendant was Miss Ellen Farmer of Ohio.  She wore a ballerina length gown of pink organdy and carried pink carnations.

Michael Rooney of New Jersey served as best man.  Ushers were Willard Barnes and Horace Latouir.

Following the ceremony, a reception was held at the WAVEs’ quarters, US Naval Hospital.

For a wedding trip, the couple went to Culver’s Lake, NJ.  Following their visit in Roanoke, Mr. and Mrs. Meines will live in Paterson, NJ.

Janet and Clix raised 4 children, 2 girls and 2 boys.  She died in April 1997. 

I don’t remember ever meeting the Meines children when I was a child.  It’s possible.  My grandmother’s sister visited usually every year, and Janet sent Christmas cards, so there was some level of closeness.  Several months ago after scanning a Meines Christmas card into my family files, on a whim I searched on Facebook for the “kids.”  Not too surprisingly, they are there.  The oldest is a new grandmother and now my Facebook friend.  Wonders of the Internet!

I got slightly off-track with this post, but climb aboard the Sepia Saturday train and see what else is cooking.

© 2014, Wendy Mathias.  All rights reserved.