Frances Hladin lost her mother when she was 13 years old, and her father sent her to live with an aunt in Wisconsin. She later moved back to Muskegon to stay with her brother.

Fran met her future husband, Carl Stenberg, in 1939. Fran and her brother were going to pick up one of her brother’s friends, Clyde Stenberg, in a Ford Model A Roadster with a rumble seat. When they arrived at the house Clyde wasn’t home, so Clyde’s brother Carl Stenberg went along for the ride instead, sitting with Fran in the rumble seat.

A year later, in 1940, Carl would leave with the National Guard for what was supposed to be a year of service. That year was extended, and Carl and Fran were were married on November 21, 1941, while he was on leave from the army and just a couple of weeks before the attack on Pearl Harbor. They would remain married until their deaths in 2016.

Fran worked in a factory during the war, as so many women did. She learned to be frugal; there are still coupons left in her war ration books. She also kept scrapbooks of all the information should could get on the Muskegon men who were off at war. It is those scrapbooks that provide most of the information for this website.

Carl returned home in 1944. Not too long after the war, they moved with their young son to a house in Fruitport, Michigan, just down the road from Carl’s brother Clyde. Their family grew, as they had a daughter and another son, all growing up in that house in Fruitport. They lived in the same house until not long before their deaths in 2016.

Stories with Fran Stenberg

• Miss Frances Hladin And Corporal Stenberg Wed in Simple Rites