From Seward to service: Roots run deep for King

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One of the “Rosie the Riveters,” Elaine King remembers her time in Seward fondly.

The 97-year-old now lives in California, but she was raised in Seward, graduating from Seward High in 1943. Her parents were Jim and Anna Nelson.

“It was wonderful,” she said. “You could go out any time, day or night.”

The population of Seward then was 2,727, she said. She remembered skating at the roller skating rink. She attended school at the old high school, where she graduated with 70 other students.

After she graduated, she and her mom left Seward for California.

“I went out to California to seek my fortune,” she said, laughing.

She worked for Lockheed in Fresno, riveting the tail sections of P-38 Lightnings. She put 45-pound weights on the planes until she was injured on the job in 1944.

“I was a Nebraska corn-fed girl,” she said.

She said lifting the weights pushed her vertebrae out of alignment, and they were in danger of cutting her spinal cord. Had she not gone to get it checked, she said, she would have had six weeks to two months before a serious injury.

At the time, she was engaged to her high-school sweetheart, Richard King, also of Seward. He graduated from SHS in 1941 and went to the Milford trade school. His parents were Jeanette and Hershel Downing King.

“We were sweethearts,” she said, adding that both were very shy. “We didn’t date until I was a senior.”

King served in the Air Force. He flew 35 missions in six campaigns out of Italy, Elaine said.

“Every day-ish we would write,” she said.

Letters were air-mailed and took at least two weeks to arrive. She paid 6 cents to mail each letter. Service members were able to send letters for free.

The two were engaged when Elaine learned how seriously she was injured.

“When I found out I was close to being paralyzed, I gave him back the ring. I kind of lied to him,” she said. “He didn’t know the real reason.”

She came back to Nebraska for the surgery and was in the hospital for two and a half months. She got back home in a brace the day before Thanksgiving that year.

Once she was on the mend, she wrote to Richard again to see if he still wanted to marry her. He did.

“The ring was at his mom’s,” Elaine said with a laugh.

She was out of the brace in early 1945. Richard got home in May, and they were married in June.

Richard was one of four brothers who served in World War II. George and Karl also returned home, but Bill, the youngest, was killed at age 19.

“His funeral was the week before our wedding,” Elaine said.

After the wedding, the couple went back to Texas were Richard was stationed. Elaine said they thought he might be sent to Japan. Then the United States dropped the atomic bombs, and the war was over.

The Kings came back to Seward, where Richard finished his schooling at Milford as a machinist.

“Both of us are wanderers,” Elaine said. “We traveled all over. We were adventuresome.”

That sense of adventure took them west. They tried Denver, but with the flood of servicemen coming back home, jobs were scarce. Richard found a job in California, first in Kingsburg, then in Delano, then in the San Joaquin valley.

They used to come back to Seward for class reunions, Elaine said. Richard died in 2013, and Elaine hasn’t been back since her brother died.

“I still think it’s a pretty town,” she said.

Elaine was scheduled to be on an honor flight in early May, the first available to “Rosies” and spouses of servicemembers. She was to be the oldest by one month and the first to bring the flag of a spouse.