On Sept. 17, 1943, Norma Edwards (born 1924) married James A. Corwin (1921-1944) in a small ceremony at the home of Norma’s cousin Mary Louise Dodge. In this photograph of the occasion, everyone is labeled and identified in great detail, which makes it unusual.
James and Norma appear in the center of the photo, beaming at the camera as they cut their wedding cake. Roy Lester served as the best man, with Polly Thompson Puritis as the matron of honor. A note indicates that Polly came from Riverhead and was a student nurse. The Rev. Francis Kinsler, seated, married the couple, and his wife, Dorothy, is at left. The cake everyone is gathered around probably required some wartime-rationed products like sugar and butter, which would have been saved for this cake.
Like many World War II-era brides, Norma didn’t have the kind of elaborate lacy white wedding dress we often think of. Many brides at the time actually borrowed dresses from friends, and fabric shortages continued after the war.
In September of 1943, Norma was a nursing student at Bellevue Hospital in New York City, which she chose to attend largely because East Hampton’s community doctor, Dr. David Edwards, had endorsed that hospital’s nursing program.
James, the groom, was stationed as a technical sergeant with the Army Air Forces in Idaho and came home on a few days’ leave. He served as a radio operator and gunner and died in a crash of a B-24 aircraft on an icy runway in England as it took off for the Battle of the Bulge on Dec. 27, 1944. The couple were married for just over a year, and much of their time was spent apart as a result of the war and their work.
Norma later remarried and spent many years as a nurse at Bellevue before returning to live full time in Springs later in life.
Andrea Meyer is the head of the East Hampton Library’s Long Island Collection.
