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1
THE YEAR 1941
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I kept my diary very meticulously through November 28, 1940. However, effective November 18, 1940, I became section head of the Industrial Haulage Section of the Transportation Department and soon concluded that my new duties would not permit me to continue to enjoy the luxury of keeping a diary. I thereupon gave up the diary and did not resume it until July 17, 1942, when I was about to embark upon my stint as a dollar-a-year man in the War production Board in Washington. This 19 1/2-month period was to prove to be an interesting and significant one and represents one which isn't covered diarywise except for a few pages of greatly condensed comments which hardly do it justice. Therefore I've decided to try to rectify this omission by reconstructing as best I can what occurred in that important period of my career as I finally moved up into the managerial level of the General Electric Company. Also I shall try to picture a few of the more important aspects of our family and social life at the time. I don't have much to go on in the way of material but this has happened before and I've been surprised at what I've been able to produce as the picture gradually unfolds from a few notes, pictures and memories.

I have no way of segregating what happened in the month of December 1940 so I shall simply toss that in with the year 1941. However, I think I can do better separating 1941 and the first half of 1942 particularly businesswise and shall add the 1942 piece to the already existing diary covering the latter part of 1942. Also, since I have literally years of day-by-day diary on each side of this 19 1/2-month period in which my whole existence is blended into a continuous story, both domestic and business, I think I'll do this job the same way rather ^[[than]] trying to separate the two as I've done in some cases previously. **

Forman H. Craton
Erie, Pa.,
May 20, 1976.

**Finally I changed my mind about this and separated the GE and domestic stories.