Lawrence Newman papers
Call Number
Date
Creator
Extent
Language of Materials
Abstract
A small collection of ephemera and correspondence documenting the military career of New Yorker Lawrence Newman (1912–1985), a sergeant with the U.S. Army Air Forces during World War II at Sheppard Air Force Base and Amarillo Army Air Field, both in Texas.
Biographical / Historical
Lawrence Newman was born in Manhattan on 27 April 1912 to Russian immigrants Reuben and Hanna Newman. Reuben Newman was a physician. Lawrence graduated from high school, and spent a year each at Columbia University and City College, where he studied retailing. At the time of his marriage to Doris Ballenberg in 1936, Newman worked for the advertising firm of Albert Frank-Guenther Law. Then, for five years, he supervised the direct mail and mail order departments for the Hecht Company, a department store chain.
In late December 1943 Newman received his Selective Service summons to report for induction into the armed forces. Effective 9 February 1944 he entered active duty as a member of the Enlisted Reserve Corps at Camp Upton, New York. By May Newman was at Sheppard Air Force Base in Wichita Falls, Texas, and by mid-June had been transferred to Amarillo Army Air Field. He spent the remainder of his enlistment at Amarillo, except for four weeks in June-July 1945, when he enrolled in an Enlisted Classification Training Program at Maxwell Field, Alabama. Newman worked as a clerk typist, a class specialist, and, ultimately, an administrative specialist, supervising the entrance, elimination, and graduation of enlisted men in an AAF Mechanics School. His rank rose from private, to corporal, to sergeant. He was honorably discharged at his highest rank on 5 February 1946 with an American Theater Ribbon, a Good Conduct Medal, and a World War II Victory Medal.
Lawrence Newman died 18 November 1985, aged seventy-three.
Arrangement
Material is sorted by category and filed chronologically.
Scope and Contents
Besides a few pieces of ephemera dating before and after his time in the military (see Folder 1), the bulk of Lawrence Newman's papers focus on the years 1940–1946, from his registration with the Selective Service (Folder 3), through his activities at Sheppard Air Force Base (Folder 6) and Amarillo Army Air Field (Folders 7–9), and ending with his honorable discharge on 5 February 1946 (Folder 12). Items of particular interest include the pamphlets So You've Got a Furlough? and Going Back to Civilian Life (Folder 10). The former offers servicemen blunt advice on spending money ("Stay out of clip joints"), remaining disease free ("Girls who make a habit of hanging around railroad and bus stations . . . are to be especially avoided"), and the pitfalls of contracting a half-baked marriage ("Don't mistake that gleam in her eye for love light when it may only be . . . anticipation of a nice, fat, Government Allotment check"). Three undated, instructional drawings show the approved method of "Latrine Cleaning," the proper "Alignment and Order of Clothing" in a barracks bunk, and how to correctly pack a footlocker (also in Folder 10).
Subjects
Organizations
Genres
Access Restrictions
Open to qualified researchers.
Use Restrictions
Photocopying undertaken by staff only. Limited to 20 exposures of stable, unbound material per day. Application to use images from this collection for publication should be made in writing to: Department of Rights and Reproductions, The New-York Historical Society, 170 Central Park West, New York, NY 10024-5194, rightsandrepro@nyhistory.org. Phone: (212) 873-3400 ext. 282.
Copyrights and other proprietary rights may subsist in individuals and entities other than the New-York Historical Society, in which case the patron is responsible for securing permission from those parties. For fuller information about rights and reproductions from N-YHS visit: https://www.nyhistory.org/about/rights-reproductions.
Preferred Citation
This collection should be cited as: Lawrence Newman Papers, MS 3070, The New-York Historical Society.
Immediate Source of Acquisition
Gift of Barbara Newman (daughter of Lawrence), 2013 and 2018.
About this Guide
Processing Information
Archivist Joseph Ditta arranged and described this collection in December 2018.