“Johnny Came to College to get an Education – He Found Romance Anyway”: The Unconventional Wartime Story of John and Marie Renza

Authors

Julien Dumont, Politics and Law Concentration, 2012 Bryant graduate
Katie Gorham, Global Studies Concentration, 2010 Bryant Honors graduate

Comments

History Advisor: Judy Barrett Litoff

Conference presentation: National Technology and Social Science Conference, Las Vegas, Nevada, April 5-9, 2009.

Publication: 2009 National Social Science Proceedings, Volume 41, #3, pp. 71-79.

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Abstract

Among the long list of economic, social, and political changes that American society experienced during the World War II era was a trend toward whirlwind romances, courtships, and marriages. The pressures of war, namely the conscription of most able-bodied American men, placed many young couples in precarious positions as they faced a long-term separation, names a “courtship by mail,” or a hasty marriage. Marie Teigue and John Renza, both wartime graduates of Bryant College, bucked the trends of their age. The Renzas were a couple that fell in love, grew apart, grew up, and found each other again on their own terms, against the backdrop of World War II, and not because of it.