It was the sweet summer of 1939 on the placid, freshwater beach of Lake Michigan when Jonny, aged 19 and Norma, aged 15 met for the first time. Norma, a striking brunet beauty, and local Chicago gal had joined her cousin May and her fiancé for a lenient summer on the lake soaking up the beaming sun. But it soon became apparent to May that she didn’t want Norma to be deemed as the third wheel the entire summer (even though Norma was engaged to her high school sweetheart at the time). So with a couple of connections, along came the tall, dark and handsome, Jonny Poehl. “We were just friends when we met that summer,” Norma told me with a mischievous smirk. “But I promised to write to him as soon as he left for training”. The pair had spent the entire summer going to the local movie theater in town and watching the sunset, “all the things you would expect from a platonic relationship”, snickered Kim, the daughter of Norma, as she smothered more butter onto her biscuit. After that summer, the pair went their separate ways as Norma was going to University in Mississippi and Jonny was sentenced to active duty in the Pacific with the United States Navy. “I’ll be seeing you”, those placid words ended every letter between the two. “He could never tell me exactly where he was and the letters came weeks from when he first sent them, so all I could do was hope that I would see him again soon,” said Norma.
While in Mississippi, Norma had some adventurous times. After falling in love with a local Mississippi boy, she ended the engagement with her high school sweetheart. “I remember meeting with Jonny when he came back and I told him about my new engagement, oh boy”, Norma laughed, “he was a jealous one”. “The friend zone is what we call it today Grandma”, laughed Caitlin, as she was stealing butter from Kim. With all the love stories sprouting in Norma’s life, I almost overlooked the fact that there was a war going on during it all. “Don’t be fooled, it affected our everyday lives. I would read the newspaper section with the names of the soldiers that lost their lives in battle, it would be the son of my mum’s best friend or my neighbor. It was all very personal”. Alongside Britain and the other allied forces, the United States played a huge role on the European side of the war. “It was still very frightening on the Pacific side as well, especially after December 7th,1941,” said Norma. The event on that day saw 2,335 American troops killed at their naval base Pearl Harbor. “After that, people’s emotions were everywhere, I just prayed to god that everyone would be safe” Norma paused, and it would all be over soon”.
After graduating from University in Mississippi, Norma then moved back to Chicago to live with her sister. During the day she worked at the University of Chicago and on the evenings she would sing Jazz at the local nightclubs. The Jazz age hit off in the United States just after world war I and Chicago was one of the main cultural centers for it. While working at the University of Chicago, Norma was in charge of filing insurance but her simple job leads her to meet one of the most influential individuals in United States history. During the time of Norma working there, the United States were starting to conduct their secret design, the Manhattan Project. The Manhattan Project was a research project conducted by the United States to create the first nuclear bomb. One of the key researches behind the project was Robert Oppenheimer. “It was cool, yet also scary, to have met (Oppenheimer) the person who contributed to such a vital project in our nation’s history”.
It was after this time that the relationship between Jonny and Norma grew even deeper. And what about your fiancé Caitlin asked confoundedly. “I left him in Mississippi after he told me that he shot a black man while he was hunting in the woods,” said Norma. During 1940s Mississippi, this was, unfortunately, a common occurrence and was met with zero consequences. As shown in 1955 with the infamous lynching of Emmet Till. “I knew I wanted to marry Jonny after he came back to visit during the August of 1944” she said. “I had never been as happy in my life as I was while I was with him, the feeling went on because my love for him was strengthened a thousand times in those few short days together”. The compassion that Norma took to describe her love for Jonny was like one saw in the movies. Except, this wasn’t a script. This was proof that even in a time of conflict, that the power love always wins.
“I didn’t hear from him,” she said. The last time Jonny had written to her, he had detailed that he was on the USS Hughes, a destroyer ship that was a part of the Battle of Leyte during the autumn of 1944. “I had him in my prayers, but even my hope began to fade”. At the same time, Norma had been offered a job to sing at local bar in Hawaii. “Instead of finding Johnny’s name in the newspaper's list of killed soldiers, I thought I would just run to Hawaii and forget about him”. It wasn’t until a drizzly, March day in 1945 that she had finally received a letter. “I wasn’t sure who is was from at first, it was a rectangular package with lots of stickers on it, but then, in my heart, I knew it was Jonny,” she said. It turned out that Jonny had been on the USS Hughes when it was kamikazed on December 10th 1944. “He was stranded on an island for three months,” Kim said. Although Jonny was on an island for three months, his love for Norma never changed. In fact, he constructed a bracelet on the island that said, “hands off boys, this belongs to Jonny”. “I just had a feeling” Norma beamed, “I had a feeling in my bones after that day that we would be together for a long time”.
After rejecting the job in Hawaii, Jonny and Norma reunited during October of 1945 in which they got engaged. Two short months later, the destined pair wedded on a chilly night of December 16th in Chicago. After the war was over, the couple resided in Michigan City, a small town next to Lake Michigan. In 2015 they celebrated their 70th wedding anniversary. They continued to live life to its fullest and loved each other as much as they did when they got married. As Kim escorted Norma to the car she turned and said, “It is crazy was life has in store for you”, she chuckled. “I mean; we were just friends when we met that summer”.