The Ohio Soldiers and Sailors Home came into its remarkable life during the 1870s, a moral response to the debt owed Ohio families damaged destroyed by fealty to the great national struggle just ended the American Civil War. On a desolate hilltop just outside the Green County town of Xenia, Ohio, an entire park-like campus sprang into being. By the turn of the century, a thousand children were housed, clothed, fed, and educated at the place they called the Home. It was nearly 500 acres containing, among other things, a farm, its own power plant, an extensive trades school, playing fields and total self-sufficiency.
Marilyn Flickinger Green arrived at the Ohio Soldiers and Sailors Home, at the age of four, in 1936. Marilyn remembers in detail what it felt like to be dropped off at the Home on that very day, a sad and scared little girl. But she also remembers the good times she had at the Home, spending fourteen years of her life in a facility surrounded by teachers, family members, and friends. …Stories of the Home is her collection of memories.
This book is a delightful collection of short stories written by the children, now adults, raised in the Ohio Soldiers’ and Sailors’ Orphans Home/Ohio Veterans’ Children’s Home, Xenia, Ohio. In their own words, they share their favorite memories. Whether funny, ornery, coming of age, sentimental, or heartwarming, their stories tell of life in the orphanage.