Martin Dam during WWII
Metal products were not available during the war, so Luther Ellison bought a used bike and repaired and painted it for his daughter.
Barbara Cole shares her wartime memories of Martin Dam Village
Betsy Iler. Dec 14, 2019 (A Story From Lake Magazine)
Life changed very little for 6-year-old Barbara Ellison when the war broke out, except that pilots from the military base in Montgomery practiced diving raids over Martin Dam. Ellison grew up in Martin Dam Village. She married Dadeville native Jeff Cole, and when she was 16, Cole left the only community in which she had ever lived, but in 1941, she was a little girl. At that time, practice bombing runs were the only war-related lifestyle change she knew.
“Well, that, and we needed stamps to buy things like coffee, sugar and shoes. I remember that I outgrew my shoes. My brother had grown so fast that he had used up all of our stamps, and I had to wear goulashes – rubber boots that slipped over your shoes – for three weeks until we had enough stamps again to buy new shoes for me,” Barbara Cole said last month as she sat in the sunroom at her Dadeville home, reminiscing about life at Martin Dam Village during World War II.
