James Madison High School

"A few things here in Madison have changed since you left. There isn’t so much frivolity. We are more serious in our attitude. We know and feel what is going on, and we know that this war is serious business."

As the introduction to their 1943 Madisonian yearbook, graduates from James Madison High School in Rochester, NY composed a V-Mail or Victory Mail letter to all former students serving in WWII. The letter describes how things at school have changed since the War began in both serious as well as comic ways: students spending more of their time volunteering with the Red Cross than participating in clubs and girls – with so many male students now away overseas – getting ‘lonelier and lonelier.’ One thing that will never change the letter claims is the homework. What else in the Madisonian yearbook might also show the effects of the War on student life?