Schlaefer, Lora, 1992 July 22, Madison, Wisconsin:
Recorded interview and transcript available online.Lora (Woolsey) Schlaefer was born on October 17, 1919, on the interurban highway between Chicago and Rockford, Illinois. Of Swedish descent, but several generations removed from the immigrant experience, Mrs. Schlaefer was raised in Rockford along with one sister. After she was graduated from Rockford High School, she attended Blackburn College and later Iowa State University in Ames, Iowa, from which she was graduated in the spring of 1942. She then moved to Wisconsin Rapids, Wisconsin, where she met Orville Schlaefer, whom she married following the conclusion of the Second World War. After a year in Wisconsin Rapids, she went back to Iowa State to pursue a master's degree but did not complete the program. Her next job was in Kansas City, Kansas, where she worked for the National Dairy Council. After the conclusion of the war, she moved back to Wisconsin Rapids, where she remained until moving to Madison in 1951. She raised three children in Madison, where she continues to live.
While attending Iowa State, Mrs. Schlaefer grew interested in the Society of Friends (Quakers), and she became an affirmed Friend prior to her graduation from the university. She remains active in the Madison Monthly Meeting of the Society of Friends.
: Mrs. Schlaefer lived in several different locations during the course of World War II, and that enables her to see how the war was viewed from a university town, a small Wisconsin town, and a major Great Plains metropolis. She also has a particularly interesting perspective on the hostilities because of her then newfound activity in the Society of Friends. Because pacifism is one of the most important facets of Quaker belief, Mrs. Schlaefer found herself having decidedly mixed feelings about American involvement in the world war. Although she felt fundamentally that war was wrong, she saw the need to be involved and particularly felt the need for an Allied victory. Nonetheless, she was torn, as were many followers of so-called peace religions. Her Quaker beliefs and Quaker activism in the war play an important part in her interview. Particularly interesting is her discussion of Friends' agitation for civil rights for blacks in Kansas City. The actions taken were similar to what the entire nation would witness in the ensuing decades. Other subjects that Mrs. Schlaefer discusses include nutrition and the business of women's work, rationing and the effect that it had on her life in general and upon her life as a nutritionist, and her experiences in attempting to communicate with the man who would later become her husband, who was stationed in the Philippines. Particularly notable among several interesting stories is her account of the events of V-E day in Kansas City.
