If you look up 1225 Meadow Lane Road in Dunwoody on Google maps, you end up in the middle of the road between Walton Ashford Apartments Homes and Target near Perimeter Mall. This is where Country Squire Farm was located, the home of Arthur King Adams and Marie Butler Adams.

As a survivor of the Holocaust, Ratonyi now shares his story with groups of middle and high school children, as well as adult audiences. He has presented at The William Breman Jewish Heritage Museum and other venues. He wrote a book about his life experiences, “From Darkness into Light: My Journey through Nazism, Fascism, and Communism to Freedom,” published January 12, 2022.

Thanks to a reader of pasttensega.com, I can now share the journey of Abraham (Abe) Koppel during World War II. Koppel wrote down a narrative of his experiences when his granddaughter was working on a school project. The family also shared a photograph of Koppel and the X-ray section he trained with at Lawson General Hospital, along with an image of the back of the photograph with messages from several men.

In 1944, the land that is now DeKalb Peachtree Airport in Chamblee was home to Naval Air Station Atlanta. Men came from all over the U. S. to train at Naval Air Station Atlanta beginning in 1941 and women began to arrive in 1942 to work as link instrument trainers.

Lawson General Hospital sat adjacent to Naval Air Station Atlanta, where the IRS and CDC Chamblee offices are located today. The hospital opened in April of 1941.

I first learned of Hilbert Margol during the pandemic. I attended a zoom presentation where he shared the story of himself and his twin brother Howard during WW2. The twin brothers, part of the 42nd Infantry, are Dachau liberators. Jan Slimming arranged for me to attend the presentation to the Atlanta Chapter of the Churchill Society. You can read this history on the Appen Media/Dunwoody Crier website here. It is also available in a Past Tense GA blog post from 2021.

The website of AMEDD presents history of the Army Medical Department and includes data of the various Medical Department Technician Schools across the US during WWII. In addition to treating patients at Lawson General Hospital, which was in Chamblee on the outskirts of Atlanta Georgia, men (and women with the Red Cross) were being trained to provide medical care to injured soldiers. This training began in July of 1942 for Lawson General Hospital

The Navy chose the Chamblee site for a Naval Aviation Reserve Base and issued contracts for three million dollars in construction. Fifty permanent buildings, two hangars and three runways were planned. The base was commissioned by Secretary of the Navy Frank Knox on March 22, 1941. The large buildings were designed by Robert & Co. and constructed by Mion Construction Co. over three and a half years.

In November of 2018, I had the honor of meeting ninety-two year old World War II veteran George Grant. Richard Adams, born along what is now Dunwoody Club Drive in 1933, introduced me to his friend George Grant of Hollywood, Georgia. Grant shared his experiences in Italy during the final months of the war. Mr. Grant died January 30, 2020 at the age of 93.

Fred Donaldson remembers that after the bombing of Pearl Harbor, he and other young men gathered at a small local store called Nash’s in Dunwoody,, Georgia to talk about the tragic event. In June of 1942, he enlisted and began a journey that would take him across the United States and across the world.

World War II veteran and Dachau liberator Hilbert Margol shared his experiences with me in February of 2021. It was an honor to meet Hilbert Margol, World War II veteran who has lived in Dunwoody since 1984, thanks to a Zoom call arranged by Jan Slimming and the Churchill Society-Atlanta Chapter. He shared with the group the story of how he and his brother came to be at Dachau on April 29, 1945-liberation day.

In early 1943, 500 WAVES were brought to Atlanta, first training downtown and staying at the Biltmore Hotel while barracks were built to house them at Naval Air Station Atlanta. The station was not physically located in Atlanta, but in Chamblee, Georgia. It was on land that is now DeKalb Peachtree Airport. (Atlanta Constitution, January 31, 1943, “WAVES Begin Trainer School Tomorrow with Class of 500”)

I came across an Atlanta Constitution article from 1942 that announced women working as Link flight trainer instructors, teaching pilots blind flying using the Link trainer machine. The instructors also taught women who were part of the WAVES (Women Accepted for Volunteer Emergency Service), who in turn were sent across the country to be instructors.

Bing Crosby and Bob Hope came to Brookhaven in 1943 for a golf match fundraiser. The match was held at Capital City Club, formerly known as Brookhaven Country Club, to benefit the Red Cross Ambulance Corps. Bing Crosby and Ed Dudley played as a team against Bob Hope and Johnny Bulla on a Sunday afternoon in May.