College Student Collects Stories Of WWII Soldiers In 'Reading's Boys'

READING, MA — A college student from Reading has embarked on an ambitious journey to collect the stories of every Reading and North Reading resident who served in World War II.

Autumn Hendrickson, 22, is a senior at Endicott College studying English secondary education. After graduation, she plans to pursue a masters in military history. She currently lives in Danvers but spent much of her youth in Reading.

How Hendrickson became interested in researching this topic is complex. She said that she has "four moms and two dads," including her two moms in Reading, Judy and Carol, where she grew up from age 11 on.

Because of what she called her "complicated" family history, Hendrickson has long had an interest in genealogy. On a family trip to Nova Scotia, Hendrickson managed to find an ancestor's gravesite who died in 1885. She also had several family members who served and died in World War I.

She took classes that covered World War II but she said they were too "big picture" for her.

"The way I understand history is through the grunts on the ground, through the average person," she said.

Hendrickson said she has long had more interest in World War I than World War II. But when she began research for Reading's boys, the first draft card she looked at happened to be for one of the 32 soldiers from Reading who died in the war. At that point, she realized that the project was bigger than her, she said.

She began the project in May 2020, then a nearly graduated high school senior at Reading Memorial High School writing for The Reading Post during the height of the pandemic.

“Why don’t I take people back in time?” she asked.

Since then, she has collected more than 800 stories of those who served in the war.

Hendrickson is working on the first book in what she hopes will be a five-part series. Each book will cover one year of the war, cataloging updates from Reading's troops on a monthly basis. Some of the stories were published in The Reading Post, and the book will follow a similar format.

The first book will cover 1939 to 1941. Hendrickson said she chose to start then because "there were Holocaust survivors who moved to Reading after the war, and for them, the war started at 4:45 a.m. on September 1, 1939, when the German Army crossed over into Poland."

She said there are "many, many things about this project that I have found to be rewarding." One of the most rewarding aspects is "the absolute elation that comes when you find confirmation of an individual's unit after hours and hours, and often, weeks and months of research and detective work."

Hendrickson said it's also very gratifying to be able to share information about a person with a relative of theirs while also learning more about that person.

"After all, a government form outlining someone's discharge from the Navy can't tell you that sailor's favorite color, or the song he sang his little girl when she would have a nightmare, or about how he pulled a Navy aviator from a burning plane," she said. "In many ways, I think that the most rewarding thing this project has given me, though, is the sense that the men and women I am researching, almost all of whom have long since passed away, are still very much alive, if only in my head. My hope is to be able to share that feeling with as many people as I can."

Hendrickson said that she has collected an "insanely large amount of information,” but there are some stories that stick out more than others.

One of those is about Richard Charles Austin, who lived on Prescott Street.

"My moms (Judy and Carol) and I kind of joke that I might be Richard reincarnated, because from the moment I discovered him in the earlier days of my research, I seemingly instantly memorized everything I found," she said.

She knows his birthday, the year he graduated high school, his family members, and his father's occupation.

"There is not a single other guy who I could rattle all of that information for off of the top of my head."

She also told the story of Harold Seymour "Babe" Roberts, which she said "is one that has stuck with me for a very long time."

Roberts, who she said was likely Jewish, served with the Army Air Corps, and his plane was shot down Feb. 25, 1944.

He was captured by the Germans and spent most of his captivity in Stalag-Luft IV until the late days of the war when the camp was evacuated because of advancing Russian troops.

Roberts survived "a literal death march" through the cold German winter, and then, according to his POW punch card from the National Archives, was led to Wobbelin Concentration Camp where he spent the last few days of his captivity.

Hendrickson said it seems like Wobbelin was an overflow site for many POWs who were being marched away from advancing Allied forces, but it was still a concentration camp.

"Harold spent the last few days of his captivity surrounded by fellow Jews," Hendrickson said. "I'm sure if he had ever questioned what it was all for, he got his answer then. Harold survived the war and returned home to Reading. He passed away in 2008."

Hendrickson is giving a talk at the Reading Memorial Public Library on Oct. 25 at 7 p.m. More information on the event is available here.

She will also be appearing on historian Paul Woodadge's YouTube channel Oct. 12.

Find out more about the project by going to the Reading’s Boys website.