Test Single (deleteme)

Participant Info

Membership Number
7283
Salutation
First Name
Patricia
Middle/Maiden/Previous
Fortin Gutierrez
Last Name
Treter
Address 1
c/o Jeannette Gutierrez
Address 2
821 South Grove Street
City
Ypsilanti
State
MI
Zip Code
48198
Phone
734-662-5787
Code
ROv
Work Code #
State Membership
Status
1
Date of Birth
10/12/1931
Date of Death
10/13/2017
Deceased At Join?
Comments
Name/Location of Company Worked
Red Cross - Winnipeg, Manitoba, Canada
Dates of Work
1941-1944
Type of Work
As a schoolgirl in Winnipeg, Mom put together care packages for Canadian prisoners of war while big sister Jeannette rolled bandages. They were French Canadian. Their dad, my Grandpa, was a janitor and Grandma was a housewife. Canada entered the war early, in 1939, because it was a Dominion of Great Britain at the time. Brother Ray Fortin and Jeannette's young husband Hank Parsons were in the Canadian Navy. They were junior hockey stars in Winnipeg, and when drafted (or enlisted?) both men were at first placed on the Canadian Navy Hockey Team! They played hockey for the Allied war effort! As the war heated up, the service teams were dissolved and the Navy athletes were assigned to ships. The skaters became fighters. Ray and Hank survived the war. The New York Islanders hockey team had always trained in Winnipeg during the off season and recruited talent from among the young players in the city leagues. So, after the war, Ray was recruited by the Islanders. He declined a spot on the team and decided to go to college on the Canadian GI Bill instead. As for Hank, he’d had an emergency appendectomy aboard ship, and smelled alcohol on the surgeon's breath before he went under. Not long after the war, this strong young man became sickly and died. An autopsy revealed that a sponge had been left in his abdomen. His mother, Mrs. Parsons, was one tough old English-Canadian lady and she fought hard for the Navy to take responsibility for Hank's death and award compensation to Jeannette and her little daughter. Mrs. Parsons won. Jeannette never remarried. Ray went to college and did very well in life. Mom came to Detroit in the early 1950s determined to work her way through college. She became friends with a young, charming and well-connected African-American woman named Hazel, and through Hazel met the Tuskegee Airmen. Hazel's childhood friend was jazz singer Dinah Washington and when Dinah was in town they'd go see her in the nightclubs of Detroit’s famed Paradise Valley entertainment district. Dinah would sit with Mom and Hazel between sets. After earning two degrees, Mom became what was known then as a "career woman", eventually retiring as the much-respected Director of Social Services for Macomb County. She supervised an organization of over 300 people! She was invited to serve on President Reagan's advisory panel on child welfare in the 1980s. She did very well in life also, and I am real proud of her. My Dad was a WWII Veteran who fought on Okinawa and was one of the first soldiers ashore in Occupied Japan. He saw Nagasaki from the train. A high school dropout from a poor Mexican-American family in Detroit, Dad also went to college on the GI Bill, earned two degrees, and became a successful advertising man at the legendary Jam Handy agency and later was one of the founding partners of the Bill Sandy Corporation. After he died, Mom got remarried pretty late in life to a Frenchman whose mother had been imprisoned in Auschwitz. She was not Jewish, but was married to a Jew, much like in the movie Sophie's Choice. But that's another story!
Rosie Name if Rb or Rv
Is/Was Rosie a member of ARRA?
Contact Name (Deceased Rosie Contact)
Contact Email Address
Contact Phone Number
Contact Relationship