Customer Reviews

Waiting Wives: The Story of Schilling Manor, Home Front to the Vietnam War

5 star:		(9)
4 star:		(1)
3 star:		(0)
2 star:		(0)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

I was there '72-'73. What memories this brought back! I shed many tears reading this book. This was a good place to 'wait' and Ms Moreau told a great story of the women that lived there during that time.

What an AMAZING book, really. I couldnt put it down. These women are in a completely different era and yet I guess the emotions of waiting wives dont ever change. When I finished the book I wish there was more to read, I feel like I left friends behind in the pages of the book. Nowadays you dont tend to find that sense of community among the wives, if you do you are lucky, it made me long for that. The book gave me hope, it made me feel like everything is going to be okay...even if my story doesnt end the way that I hope it will.

Just an excellent book all around. It is a book you can't put down. You get deeply involved in the characters and feel their joy and pain as you are reading. It is a part of our history that I didn't know existed - I grew up in a military family and am now married to a military man - I still have never heard of this story until someone told me to read the book. I have since recommended the book to just about everyone I know.

Reading this memoir I was very interested in Schilling Manor and how it was it's own little world for the wives and children of service men during the Vietnam war.

I read this book on a plane today, heading home to MA from visiting my husband's family for Thanksgiving in Salina, KS. I consider it a gift from my Mother-In-Law that I knew to read this book. A story that has touched my heart. I shed tears, I laughed. I didn't want it to end...but yet it had to end. I wonder the parallels to the War in Iraq. I wonder how we are taking care of today's Waiting Wives and Husbands? Much praise to Ms. Moreau.

I cannot believe it has taken so long for someone to acknowledge the heroism of wives waiting for husbands to come home from war. Not only is Waiting Wives a much needed book, it is a fantastic, poignant, and extremely relevant story, written in a graceful style that illustrates the highs and lows of living on Schilling Manor, this unique base that I had never heard about. Bravo to Moreau!

This is a very compelling story of one of the most divisive times in our nation. Donna does a great job of telling the story of what it was like to live at Schilling Manor while our Dad's were in Viet Nam. I know I was one of the kids. It was the best of times and the worst of times. It was a time when all of our emotions were on a heightened state. In one way or another we were changed forever. The Mom's that raised us, loved and nurtured us are honored in this book. Thank you for telling the story that needed to be told.

This book pulled you in from the very beginning. It brought you back to the 60's and 70's. A wonderfully untold story!

Ms. Moreau has done a fine service to history. When Schilling Air Force Base, Kansas, a SAC B-47 and Atlas F ICBM base, closed in 1965 the base housing area was retained to provide homes and a community for military families with husbands and fathers serving in remote areas, mainly Vietnam. How this was done by a few great Americans, and what it was like to be a teenager there--a military base without soldiers, only waiting wives and children--is the touching and very interesting story told by Ms. Moreau, focusing on her own family and two others.

I just finished reading Donna Moreau's first book and look forward to many more by this author. Not only is the story well written but it is well researched. She tells it like it was. The thought occurred to me that utilizing the housing of post or bases formerly closed for humanitarian purposes is a wise use of space. Why not use such places to help the displaced people of Hurricane Katrina? We need to open more Schilling Manors not close them. All wives who have ever "waited" would enjoy this book.