May 6 Today in OPC History

On May 6, 1945, Dora Duff and her two children, Donald and Dorothy, embarked to join her husband and their father, Clarence, in Eritrea. Clarence had departed alone in 1943 to return to the mission field of Ethiopia but was barred entrance by military personnel. He turned to the neighboring country of Eritrea where the border was open and urged the Committee on Foreign Missions to consider Eritrea as a mission field. The Committee was agreeable, and when the Allies had gained control of travel across the Atlantic ocean, the rest of his family was sent to join him. With tug boats pulling the ship out of the pier of New York the next morning on May 7, news came over the radio that that the Germans had surrendered and that fighting had stopped in Europe.

The ship itself was filled with about one hundred missionaries and their children returning to mission fields. Every evening on the ship there was a hymn sing followed by a brief message. Dora would write to the folks at home that "Don and Dorothy are having the time of their lives" playing with the other children on board. To her husband, she would write on May 31 giving a brief account of the trip. She finished by saying, "I have asked Dr. Wilson to take this letter and to give it to someone getting off at Massawa for you. I hope that you will get it soon. We are counting the days until we are with you and until then we continue to pray for you and long for the day when we can all be together again. With all my love, Your own, Dora."

Picture: Clarence Duff (left), Dottie Duff, Helen White, Don Duff, Margie Atwell and Peggy Fifer outside of Calvary OPC, Glenside in the early 1950s.