In November 1941, Edina women wrapped packages, but not to put under the Christmas tree for their children. As the United States tried to remain neutral in “Europe’s war,” Edina’s wealthiest women sent “Bundles to Britain” to help war-torn Great Britain.
Bundles for Britain began in 1940 when Natalie Wales Latham, a Park Avenue socialite, knitted socks and sweaters in a borrowed New York City storefront. The genius of her operation was that anyone with spare time—secretaries on their lunch hour and shoppers passing by—could join the knitting circle. Soon, people throughout the country joined the effort by sending donated clothing for British soldiers and hospitals.
In January 1941, women living in Edina’s Country Club District hosted an “Opportunity Sale” for the cause. The “rummage sale with a society accent” sold “treasures from all parts of the world … sacrificed to clothe and warm and give back a little comfort to the dazed bereft children of London, of Covington, of Birmingham,” reported the neighborhood’s monthly newsmagazine, Town Crier.
More than 70 women worked in the local Bundles for Britain headquarters in the Young-Quinlan shop in downtown Minneapolis, while others knitted, sewed and wrapped packages at home as they listened to radio reports of bombings throughout England.
On December 7, 1941, the Japanese bombed Pearl Harbor, and soon women were knitting socks and sweaters for their own sons and husbands fighting in the war, as well as British soldiers. Armed with knitting needles, American women made a difference in the war’s outcome by contributing more than $3 million worth of supplies to allied troops.
