With Our Men in Service

Volume II, Number 14. The weekly bulletin from Holy Rosary Parish was packed with information about the upcoming carnival, a Sunday ham dinner and bingo event, and notices of Men’s Sodality and Ladies Altar Society meetings. But during World War II, the news most appreciated was from those in the armed services. Tidbits were gleaned from letters home and shared among parishioners.
Members of the First German Congregational Church formed the Blue Star Letter Writing Committee to keep the congregation’s 175 service members informed about church activities, and a newsletter called “The Minister's Mailbag” to keep the men in contact with each other as well.
The students at Garden Place School collected scrap and saved their pennies for bond drives, while the young women of Holy Rosary Young Ladies’ Sodality volunteered at the Catholic USO at 16th and Logan. The Polish Harmony Club, a young-people’s group affiliated with the Polish National Alliance, entertained servicemen at Fitzsimons Army Hospital and sponsored weekly dances at the Polish Hall for military personnel.
Mary Canjar joined the Red Cross and attended classes to become an air raid warden. She was issued a uniform with a shirt, pants, helmet and armband, and made sure that windows were covered and lights turned off during blackout periods. Canjar won an award for persuading every family on Logan Street to purchase War Bonds.
Victory gardens, meatless meals, grease collection and scrap drives all supported the war effort. Women filled vacancies in factories when men left for the service. Carol Christensen worked on aircraft (including Eleanor Roosevelt’s plane) at McClellan Field near Sacramento.
On both V-E and V-J Day, church bells, factory whistles and car horns sounded. Twelve young men from Globeville lost their lives in the war; the nation and the neighborhood were forever changed by the conflict. Globeville honored its veterans from World Wars I and II with a memorial in Argo Park, dedicated August 25, 1948. Joseph Zalar, a casualty of the Korean War, would be added later.

 

The memorial in Argo Park honors veterans

from World War I, World War II and Korea.

Photo ® Mary Lou Egan

Sheedy Row

Dennis Sheedy’s Globe Smelter provided some company housing for its employees. The company built the Globe Hotel on Washington Street, a four-story building containing a kitchen, dining hall, and 125 rooms, where single men boarded two to a room, alternating shifts to use a single bed.

Houses for families were available in an area called “Sheedy Row,” east of Washington Street at about 54th Avenue. Betty Zalar Paprocki’s family occupied a two-story brick home with a rather large yard. “There were ten houses on Sheedy Row and that was the name of the street, Sheedy Row. It was a cul de sac just east of Washington Street. They were nice little houses and each one was a little different from the others. They each had a kitchen and dining room, and a small yard with room for a garden. My grandfather worked in the smelter and that’s how we got a house there."

Left to right, Betty Zalar, and her cousins Juanita and Bob Chermas, taken from the front porch of her home on Sheedy Row. Photo, Betty Zalar Paprocki