Author Finds New Bond With Her Mother in WW II Letters

Northbrook resident Cyndee Schaffer left her job testing computer systems in 2008, inspired to tell her mother’s story.

Schaffer’s mother, Mollie Weinstein Schaffer, served in the Women’s Army Corps during World War II, writing letters to friends and family in Detroit from England, France and eventually post-war Germany.

“She did what she needed to do,” Schaffer said. “She had a mind of her own. She wanted to serve her country. She felt it was her patriotic duty. She wanted to go to Europe.”

Although she’d been thinking of writing a book about her mother’s experience for years, Schaffer says she was finally motivated to start the project because she wanted to make sure the book came out while her mother was still alive.

When she was downsized from her company in 1999, Cyndee first started poring through her mother’s old letters. The project was abandoned when Cyndee got a new job, but in 2008, she began researching what became Mollie’s War in August. That meant reading dozens of books on women in the military and plowing through many more books and documents on World War II at Chicago’s Pritzker Military Library, in order to fill in the timeline of what historical events were happening when her mother was writing.

 “In the beginning with her letters there was strict censorship so she couldn’t tell us a lot of what was going on,” Cyndee said. “The book is not just a collection of letters. It’s a history of what was going on at the time where she was located.”

Mollie joined the army in 1943 at age 27 and served in medical intelligence, the department that was responsible for anticipating issues that might come up in battles, such as a lack of water or hospital beds, so that medical services could properly prepare.

After the war, it was medical intelligence that read over Nazi records to debunk the claims that they had been working to advance medical science. A Jewish woman, Mollie said she didn’t want to go to Germany but decided her time there was worth it when she was able to join other members of the military for the rededication of Frankfurt’s only standing synagogue on Rosh Hashanah, the Jewish New Year.

“There were very few Jews that were left and she said that the Jews held their heads up high and they walked to synagogue with them,” Cyndee said.

When Mollie left the army in 1945 she had earned the rank of sergeant, along with six medals including ones for good conduct and serving in the army of occupation. After the war she returned to Detroit, where her friend Ruth Schaffer set her up with her brother Jack, an army captain from Chicago who was on leave from serving in the Pacific. The two dated for three weeks and were married until Jack Schaffer died in 2000.

Mollie used the experience she had gained working in medical intelligence to get a job as a medical records transcriber at a series of community hospitals. She worked full time while her three children were growing up, and Cyndee said she was always very supportive of them, encouraging them to pursue good educations. Cyndee said she was surprised by the seeming disparity between the woman portrayed in Mollie’s and the mother who raised her.

 “I learned she was a very, very different person,” Cyndee said. “Growing up, that wasn’t the kind of person she was. She didn’t take any chances at all. Maybe you change when you have children.”

Cyndee has two children of her own and her 24-year-old son helped with the proofreading when she started working on Mollie’s War.

“It gave them and me a whole different view of what my mother was like,” Cyndee said.

A librarian at the Pritzker Library told Cyndee that she would need a traditional publisher for her book to be viewed as having historical merit. She helped her connect with the Minerva Journal of Women and War, which published an article about Mollie’s time in England and France. The editor there connected Cyndee with McFarland, a publisher that was planning a series of books about women in the military. The series never happened, but McFarland published Mollie’s War in August.

Since Mollie’s War was released, Cyndee has been working with veterans groups and doing speaking engagements throughout the Chicago area. She’ll discuss and sign copies of her book at 7 p.m. March 22 at Northbrook Public Library.

Mollie, who currently lives in Vernon Hills, attends some of the events, though at 94 she has a hard time getting out, Cyndee says. Beyond writing the initial letters, she provided her daughter with some information that Cyndee added to her commentary and picked out photos and letters that she wanted included in the book.

“My mother has read the book, although she always says, ‘I don’t need to spend the time reading it because I wrote it,’” Cyndee said.