Bracker, Grace, 1992 August 5, Madison, Wisconsin:
Recorded interview and transcript available online.: Grace (Peck) Bracker was born in Hazelton, Iowa, on August 2, 1911. Her father, a Presbyterian minister, was an immigrant from England, and her mother was the American-born child of German immigrants. After her childhood in a number of small towns in Iowa, she attended and was graduated from the University of Dubuque in 1931 with a degree in education and a teaching certificate. She taught in several towns in Iowa, teaching primarily literature, but also was on occasion forced to teach physical education. In 1939, she married Bernhard Bracker. At this time, she quit her job teaching English in Decorah, Iowa, and the Brackers moved to Madison, Wisconsin. In Madison, she worked as a part-time cook and housekeeper for her landlord. In 1942, when she was pregnant with her first child, the Brackers moved to Edgerton, Wisconsin, after Mr. Bracker received a job offer there. They would remain in Edgerton for the duration of the Second World War. After the war, the Brackers moved briefly to New Mexico before returning to Madison to settle permanently. Mrs. Bracker became a teacher in the Madison public school system and earned a master's degree in curriculum and instruction from the University of Wisconsin-Madison. It was also during this period in the mid-1960s that Mrs. Bracker's opposition to the Vietnam War piqued her interest in the Society of Friends, and she became a Quaker shortly thereafter. After her husband's death in 1965, Mrs. Bracker remained in Madison, where she continues to live.
: Mrs. Bracker speaks of many topics of interest during this interview. She is particularly insightful when discussing her feelings toward the war in Europe in relation to the war in the Pacific. She also has a great deal to say about the relations among women on the home front during the war, due to her involvement in what she calls a “baby club” in Edgerton, which she defined as serving the same purpose as a support group. She also discusses rationing and the importance of the victory garden, as well as the guilt that she felt when her garden proved to be so productive that food was inevitably wasted and she decided to plant her garden with flowers rather than food crops. As a woman whose husband did not go away to fight in the war, she is able to discuss the economic hardship faced by men who were underemployed on the home front, with wages frozen due to wartime exigency. Though she did not have any relatives fighting in the war, she did have a number of relatives still in England, so the war was very current to her in spite of her lack of relatives in uniform. A particularly poignant story is that of her uncle, who came from England to visit in 1939 and was unable to return until 1945. In spite of these hardships, she thinks of the war as mostly happy years for her family. She had a child during the war and one just following the war's conclusion, and these events were not tainted by their connection to the war.
