Published in The Day on 01/17/2012
By Kristina Dorsey, Photo by The Day
Photo: Cover image of "New London Goes to War: New London During World War II" by Clark van der Lyke


What ended up as a full-fledged book about New London during World War II started out simply enough for Clark van der Lyke.

The former city clerk for New London recalls someone asking him to look up information about the Hurricane of '38. They wanted to know what the council did the day of the hurricane and the day afterward.

"I said, 'That's interesting,'" van der Lyke says. "Then, I thought, 'Gee, what did they do Dec. 8 (1941)? They had a council meeting Dec. 8. Great.'
"So I looked, and I started following what they did and what we got involved with. It went off in all kinds of directions."

Van der Lyke, a New London native, followed that path of investigation until it grew into the 78-page book, "New London Goes to War: New London During World War II."
It was just published by the New London County Historical Society. Patricia Schaefer, former president of the New London County Historical Society and a published author, worked as the editor on the project.

On Friday, the book will be launched with festivities at the historical society's Shaw Mansion.

For the project, van der Lyke pored over city records from 1941 to 1945 - New London City Council minutes, as well as letters to the City Council, city manager and mayor. In the book, he combined those official records with some of his own memories of growing up in the region during that era.

As city clerk from 1983 until his retirement in 2001, van der Lyke says, "I was into the council records all the time. Having attended council meetings all the time, I knew that there's a lot between the lines in a council meeting - you don't get everything because it's not verbatim. You have to kind of read between the lines here and there. ... I had to fill in a few things."
On the day right after Japan bombed Pearl Harbor, the City Council took on a number of issues, including transferring $4,000 to a new defense subcommittee. It authorized the city manager to designate "restricted areas," although they didn't agree at that point what those areas would be. One councilor wanted to empower the city manager to issue official city IDs or city papers to residents and to require people staying in New London for more than 12 hours to register with the city. That suggestion ultimately didn't fly.

One of the characters van der Lyke found most interesting was Burton K. Wheeler, a non-interventionist senator from Montana. Wheeler, whose penchant for filibustering was part of the inspiration for "Mr. Smith Goes to Washington," took up the cause of an anonymous Connecticut College professor who called himself "The Whispering Professor." The professor wrote to Wheeler that Electric Boat was a hiding place for draft dodgers.

"On the floor of the Congress, Wheeler denounced Electric Boat. In 1943, everybody (in the region) was tied to EB," says van der Lyke, whose father worked at EB for 30 years. "We had to defend this somehow. It was right in the middle for the council (mayoral election), and nobody was ready to defend it, except Jimmy May. ... He came to the defense of the city and EB. He gave a dramatic speech, which is in the book."

May, by the way, was a popular figure around the city. Van der Lyke describes the councilor/multi-term mayor in the book as "a local businessman who enjoyed the public spotlight. He could frequently be seen walking up and down State Street, near his office, tipping his straw hat to the ladies and chatting with shoppers. ... He could be found most mornings at the popular Hygienic Restaurant having coffee and holding court. He seemed to know everybody, and everybody knew him."

The book touches on several aspects of wartime in New London. Huge nets made of intertwined rings of iron were strung across the Thames River, allowing ships in and out but preventing enemy subs from entering the river. Air raid wardens were posted atop one of the Connecticut College dorms, scanning the skies for German planes.

Van der Lyke says that while the City Council kept an eye on important things, it didn't lose its touch in taking care of the small ones.

"On the eighth day of the war, a lady wrote a poem to the council. She said she couldn't hear Lowell Thomas on the radio," he says. "She wrote this letter, and they brought it up at council. They said, 'We've got to look into this thing.' They were going to check with the FCC. Somebody could have said, 'Hey, there's a war going on,' but they didn't. They took care of it, which is nice."

As for being a child in southeastern Connecticut during World War II, van der Lyke referenced the Dickens quote "It was the best of times, it was the worst of times."

"It was an interesting time for kids- 9-year-olds, 10-year-olds," he says. "As the author of 'All Quiet on the Western Front' said, it was interesting if you weren't being shot at."

He recalls playing war with his pals. They saw so many submarines, they became a bit blase about them. But he remembers taking a boat over to Trumbull Airport field, where he and his father would watch airplanes practicing landing on a mock-up of an aircraft carrier deck painted on a runway.

The book follows things through, naturally, the culmination of the conflict.

"Council minutes do not contain any notations of the events or even a passing recognition that the war against Japanese, and officially World War II, had concluded in August, with the exception that a committee was to be formed 'to make suitable plans for celebration of VJ (Victory over Japan) day,'" van der Lyke writes.

Van der Lyke remembers that celebration - sitting with his parents in their car, parked in front of Mallove's Jewelers on State Street, as folks drove by and waved and blew their horns and celebrated the end of the war.