"Wave Me Goodbye" at North Canton Playhouse

Today's review and information was graciously provided by Charlene, a member of our group from Medina. On Tuesday, members of our group went to see the play "Wave Me Goodbye" at the North Canton Playhouse. Charlene took her 2 teenage sons with her to view the performance and thoroughly enjoyed it. Thank you, Charlene!
Here is her review of the play:

The play was good and gave us information we never knew. Their were adults, teens, middle school and elementary school age children in it. It took place from 1940-1945 when Herbert Hoover brought over children from Britain to live with host families from the Hoover company during WWII so they could live without the bombs and horror of war.

The parents of the children portrayed their fears and uncertainty of allowing their children to go across the ocean to the U.S. They sent them not knowing if they would ever see them again or whether the ship they would be sailing on could be torpedoed by the Germans. The play shows the children coming to the U.S. (which took three weeks by ship and then by train to Canton, and at one point the ship was two days late and it was feared that it had been attacked), living with the families for five years and growing up and becoming "Americanized".

When the war ended the children returned home to their families uncertain of what awaited them there other than their families. Some returned to families who had had new children born to them that these children had never met. After returning to Britain, the children wrote to their American families and told them the differences between the U.S. and the Britain they had returned to and what they will miss about America.

At the end of the play, the gentleman who portrayed Herbert Hoover made a small speech and told the audience that before he was asked to play Herbert Hoover he also had never heard this story of the children coming to Canton even though he grew up in Canton. We were told how many of the children later returned to the U.S. to live.

Then we were introduced to a lady from the crowd who was one of the children brought to the U.S. and eight years later returned to the U.S. to live. I apologize I cannot remember her name but we were thrilled to listen to her. She came over the first time to live in Canton when she was small and came with 4 siblings, leaving one sibling at home who was only
four and too young to come. She said that her parents never really told them why they were leaving Britain, and she was very confused as to where they were going,and why her parents weren't coming with them. She answered many questions from the audience.

My boys and I really enjoyed it and I told them that now they know a historical fact that most adults have no knowledge of. Their grandmother was surprised by the story also and she was a young adult during WWII and she knows many historical facts.