Easter Lilies, April 5, 1942

This Sunday, April 5, 2026, is Easter! In the South, children wake up and see what the Easter Bunny brought them. In their Easter basket, small chocolate eggs or perhaps a large chocolate bunny can be found with other candy such as jelly beans and marshmallow Peeps. It is the time that Christians celebrate the resurrection of their Lord and Savior, Jesus Christ. People come to church dressed in their best clothes to hear the priest or pastor speak about eternal life, forgiveness, and spiritual renewal. They gather for the midday meal — dinner, as folks in the South called it — with ham, sweet potato casserole, or scalloped potatoes. Pound, Syrup, or Angel Food cake were also favorites, along with buttermilk, custard, strawberry, peach, or chocolate pies. Then there was the Easter egg hunt! The day before, children helped dip hard-shell boiled eggs in brilliant shades of purple, blue, red, yellow, and bright green. These, and perhaps plastic eggs (filled with small toys, candy, or change), are hidden by their parents the night before for later discovery.

This yearly scene is a tradition, but I was thinking about another Easter, April 5, 1942, in Beaumont, Texas. This was a different Easter, but perhaps a more meaningful one for the people in the South. On most Sundays, you would see many people attending church, and very few businesses would be open due to the "Blue Laws" in Texas. But it was different this year; the local shipyards, refineries, and other businesses were operating 7 days a week, 24 hours a day, to support the war effort.

I know my mother's family (and my father's family) usually attended services at South Park Baptist Church on Sundays. We also followed that tradition when we visited my grandmother at Easter. But that Sunday, my grandparents and their children might have been attending church at Palestine Baptist Church near my great-grandfather, George Allen Perkins' home in Grant, Louisiana. At our family reunions, my mother and her cousins had always mentioned that my great-grandfather insisted his nine children and their families visit him on the holidays. It was a tradition held as firmly as any church service. This gathering became more important when two of my great-grandfather's four adult sons would soon be called to serve. John Calvin Perkins, 35, was later wounded serving in the Field Artillery in Germany in 1944. George Perkins' youngest son, Barney Allen Perkins, 27, served in General George Patton's Military Police in Germany in 1945. Many of George's grandsons would also serve in both the Atlantic and Pacific theaters.^[1] But sitting together in that church on Easter Sunday, 1942, neither brother nor anyone gathered there that morning could have known what lay ahead. Yet not everything was running at full speed. Rationing of rubber tires had begun, and shortages were starting to appear, especially in sugar, meat, gasoline, and leather goods.

But this industrious activity came with sacrifices that sermons could not completely erase, and my grandparents knew better. They had known war before, just like their parents, their grandparents, and great-grandparents! But this Sunday was special and even more fitting for the realities of war! It was Easter and their faith that kept them and their ancestors going, even when the odds were against them and even when some died. And the tradition and hope would continue to the next generation and the next.