CARIBOU, Maine — With limited communication between soldiers and their families during World War II, a teenage Theresa Madigan from Caribou played a tremendous role in relaying messages from prisoners of Germany back to their loved ones on American soil.
Every night, at 7 o’clock, the teenager would sit down in the family’s kitchen and tune in to the evening broadcast coming from far across the ocean and hastily pen every piece of information possible; she may not have been fighting for her country or working at a munitions factory, but nestled next to the radio in her kitchen, Theresa found her own way to help the war effort.
“My oldest brother, Claude, was in New Guinea in the Philippines where there was fierce fighting occurring against the Japanese. Frances was in Cadet training to be a pilot, and my youngest brother, Phil, was on a Navy ship transporting mail to the troops,” Theresa described. “I felt sort of guilty that I was not doing anything to help out because of my age and when the opportunity appeared that I could help, by listening to short wave broadcasts and reporting to the soldiers’ families that they were alive and well in German prison camps, I was at least able to do something,” she explained.
It was a unique and meaningful hobby — and one that came to her through stories her father told.
Theresa’s father, Napoleon (Paul) LeVasseur was assistant manager at the Caribou Post Office, and one of his co-workers, Joe, had joined the military to go off and fight the war. Paul came home one night and told his family that Joe’s family had been informed by a post card, penned by someone listening to a German POW camp broadcast, that Joe had been captured but was alive.
“I thought ‘that’s phenomenal, I wish I could do that!’” Theresa recalled.
With that thought came the impetus for hundreds and hundreds of postcards, mailed to all corners of the country.
The woman interviewing the American soldiers spoke English very well, but a smile crept across Theresa’s face as she recalled how fast the woman talked — Theresa thinks the German woman was probably in her mid 20s.
“She would say ‘OK, all of these men have been captured by the Germans, and they’re been interred in German prison camps, but I’m sure their families would like to know that they’re alive,’ — because in most cases, families would be told (their soldier) was missing in action, which could mean dead,” Theresa explained. “But in this case, they were alive, so I would take the names down, and I’d sit there and write a postcard to each family.”
The German woman spoke so fast, and the 15-year-old girl did the best she could to keep up, but between the quick-talking and the radio static, sometimes Theresa would get a letter wrong in a name; fortunately, postal officials at receiving offices would piece together approximate names with appropriate families to make sure the news arrived at the right homes.
Theresa looked forward to the evening broadcasts, faithfully writing down every name and address that she could in order to send a message of hope to wherever families resided.
Theresa’s father so believed in the work his daughter was doing, he’d bring her home a dozen penny-post cards every night. Frequently, Theresa would receive a response from one of the families she’d corresponded with, and she says that was very gratifying particularly since sometimes her message was the first word they’d received.
“I just felt … I wish if one of my brothers had been prisoners that someone would get the message to my folks the way I was doing it,” she said. “I just felt so good that I could do this because I was getting such nice letters back from people.”
The very first letter she received, for example, was from a man so happy to hear that his son was alive, he continued to write Theresa — she received roughly 250 letters from strangers she’d shared news with.
The war ended, Theresa’s brothers returned home and, like all teenagers, Theresa grew up; she married William Madigan (a WWII Army veteran) and they had four daughters together. Neither Theresa nor William talked about the war too much with their kids, but Theresa was still in correspondence with many in the following years — some of whom were even stationed at Loring.
“That, to me, was the most gratifying thing I’d experienced, because they’d come to see me and say ‘you’re the little girl that did this,’ only at that time, I wasn’t a little girl — I was married!” she recalled with a smile that hasn’t changed a bit over the decades.
In addition to the letters written to her from families across the nation who were happy to learn their sons, brothers and husbands were alive, Theresa has kept scrapbooks of news clippings from WWII.
Theresa lives in Caribou, where she’s just as patriotic as ever … and still pens wonderfully thoughtful notes.
