Nadine checked on people who didn’t have a private physician. Nadine recalled, “I went out in the country. Most of the people I went to see were elderly, and they didn’t have anything to do with the war, and they had a hard time because they didn’t understand the ration business. It was hard for them to make do, and it was hard for them to get to the doctor, so I had a lot of stuff to take in.” She worked with doctors to get medicine to those in need, but back then, the only medicines they had were aspirin and morphine that was given through shots. “The thing that really put Horseheads on the map,” Nadine said, “was that the government had bought up farms on Ithaca Road or condemned them, and put up warehouses. They brought in all kinds of material for war, like tanks. They had girls driving the tanks, but no pictures were allowed. It was a top-secret mission. That’s what really put us on the map. We sent all the materials on trains and started trading things with Britain, but no one was supposed to know about it.”
Tons of people came to Horseheads during the war, but there wasn’t any place to live. They wanted to change the old middle school into an apartment building, but there wasn’t a contractor that could do it because of the money situation. Windsor Gardens was built. They were big brick buildings that were inexpensive, with tubs made out of a metal. They were especially nice, and the population jumped up to 11,000 people from about 2,500. That was a major change for the small town of Horseheads. After the war, Joe came back from Europe where he was in the 9th Airforce. He had nothing to do with the airforce, but had kept up with his dental work during the war, fixing teeth and dentures for the soldiers. Joe Ferraioli wasn’t able to come home almost until a year after the war ended. When he did come to Horseheads, Nadine quit her job because she wanted to be a mother and didn’t feel that moms should work. Joe opened up his dental firm again, and Nadine occasionally helped, but she wasn’t really an employee. The only time Nadine worked was when there was a polio epidemic here. All nurses were pulled in to work at the hospitals, (Nadine worked at Arnot) and they were paid good money by the infantile paralysis. Nadine started her family right away and was very happy.
Nadine Ferraioli didn’t think the war really changed too much for her, but she thought the war caused a big problem for families. When the war started, mothers went to work to fill the jobs, and the children were left with just anybody. Not many women wanted to quit their jobs after the war because they liked the friendliness of the job, the money, and the fact that they didn’t have to stay home or do housework. Everything she has seen that was unpleasant or bad in bringing up the family was when the mother went to work. The only things that happened to her during the war was that she was without her husband for four or five years and she lost her baby. The baby was born prematurely, and because they didn’t have the technology and the facilities that we have today, the baby died. The biggest thing, she feels, is that we are so much more medically equipped now than we were then. “The war was a changing point of everything,” Nadine said, “of the way of life, of attitude, families wanted more, mothers wanted more…” Everything just got bigger.
Nadine Ferraioli, a Horseheads historian, survived World War 2. Nadine, born on March 7, 1915, was a nurse at age 27 when the war broke out. Now, at age 86, she told her stories to our group in the library of the Horseheads Middle School on March 28, 2001. Nadine felt the war didn’t really change her life.
Nadine Meyers married her husband, Joe Ferraioli, in 1940. Her husband and she moved to Brooklyn where they shared a darling apartment. In the front, Joe ran his dental business, fully equipped with the chair, tools, X-ray, and sterilizer. Nadine helped out because she had medical experience, but she wasn’t really an employee. Children from Manhattan would come to their office on a bus with nametags, get their teeth worked on, get back on the bus, and went home. The Ferraiolis heard the news about Pearl Harbor together on a Sunday afternoon when they were sitting on their couch in their apartment right across the bay from the Statue of Liberty. When the radio announced the horrendous news of the December 7 attack, Nadine said she, and the nation, didn’t, or couldn’t, even realize what it meant to have their country attacked and that everyone was in shock. Even though her husband had a strong dental firm and was teaching all the other dentists his work, he was bound and determined to join the war effort. When Joe went to war, Nadine came back to Horseheads, the town she had grown up in; the same place where her family settled in 1815. In Horseheads, Mrs. Ferraioli became the public health nurse for Chemung County.
As a public health nurse, Nadine worked throughout Breeseport, Erin, Van Etten, and Hicks, making house calls. During World War 2, gasoline was very scarce, and a lot of carpooling went on. Being a nurse, Nadine was lucky and was given as much gasoline as she needed to get from place to place. She had a little Packard Coupe that her husband had won in a card game.