November 2025
To kick off the upcoming holiday season, this November’s Item of the Month from the Special Collections Department celebrates the festivities that surrounded the Thanksgiving holiday in 1945. This menu is from the Naval Air Technical Training Center here in Memphis, TN. The cover features an illustration of a Naval Airman in action and states, “Lest We Forget...Let us dedicate this first peaceful Thanksgiving in many years to the men, living and dead, who were trained for battle here among us and who went forth to make this day possible for us and for all the peoples of the earth.” This was a pivotal holiday season as it was the first peacetime Thanksgiving in over four years. Americans were grappling with a mixture of emotions – sorrow and joy, gratitude and mourning, reflection and optimism. Having the opportunity to spend tranquil time with family and friends over a bountiful, not-rationed meal must have been a treasured time for many.
Of note is the line-up of courses and the food selections at hand for those attending this Thanksgiving dinner. There are many traditional Thanksgiving foods found in the menu like turkey, gravy, mashed potatoes, corn, cranberry sauce, and rolls; and to top it all off, cigarettes! Not much is known about the entertainment, if any, that was provided at dinner or what time the dinner started and ended; however, it can be presumed that many people at the dinner enjoyed themselves that evening. One can picture them basking in the company of fellow servicemen, servicewomen, and their families, while quietly making plans for the future.
Items like this Thanksgiving menu record regular life for Americans during 1945. By preserving these items for generations to follow, the Special Collections Department houses the collective memory of those who lived before us and ensures that items like menus, documents, photographs, records, correspondence, artifacts, etc., are available as primary sources for the campus and the community.
To view more materials found in the Special Collections Department in person, please schedule an appointment online here.
Text from this post is by Grace Neeley, Archivist/Librarian, Assistant Professor, Special Collections. She can be reached at gneeley@memphis.edu
The Item of the Month is a specially selected item (book, photograph, ephemera, artifact, etc.) that members of the University Libraries' Special Collections Department would like to highlight each month to show the breadth and variety of their collections.
