ANTIGO — Arleen Kaefer was hesitating to do something seemingly harmless: put a blue star up in her window. Kaefer was living in Buffalo. Her husband had been drafted for World War II.
The blue star, of course, signified that a member of the household was serving in the military.
Why the prospect of doing something apparently innocuous made her wary, though, was actually quite understandable, according to her granddaughter Kathy Kaefer.
“She didn’t want anyone to know she was home alone,” said Kaefer, “until she realized walking down the street one day that every single house had a blue star on the window and every woman was home alone.”
Another story from her time as a young woman which Arleen shared with her granddaughter involved one more ubiquitous homefront experience: depending on ration cards for food.
“Her butcher — and she never knew why, if he was a little sweet on her or what it was — but every time she went in with her ration books, he always wrapped the food up and handed it back to her with a little wink, and there was always an extra stick of butter or an extra pork chop in there or something,” Kaefer laughed.
The anecdotes are just two of many Kaefer learned while interviewing Arleen, her father’s mother, along with her other grandmother and several veterans, all of whom had lived through World War II.
These stories are interwoven into “Kiss Me Once: Stories from the Homefront,” a show that pays tribute to the men and women of “The Greatest Generation” with a mix of both light and moving songs from the era like “I’ll Be Seeing You,” “The White Cliffs of Dover,” and “We’ll Meet Again.”
Kaefer is currently in the midst of a 36-city tour for the show — which Backstage Magazine named as the Best Debut in its Bistro Awards for New York City cabaret performances in 2009 — and will make a stop Saturday night at 7 p.m. at Antigo High School’s Volm Theatre.
Saturday’s show is the second last in the 2023-2024 concert series put on by the Antigo Music Association, which books five artists a year through a Minnesota agency called Allied Concert Services.
Only season membership holders with the Antigo Music Association can attend the show, but those who pay for 2024-2025 memberships will get free tickets to Kaefer’s show and the Beatles tribute show on May 15, according to longtime association board member Dede Cromer.
“You could go to Wausau, but you’re paying $40-plus for every show you see — not for an entire series,” Cromer said. “It’s the best deal you’re going to get in Antigo for $55 (the season membership fee for adults). You get to hear professional musicians who played all over the world. Plus, we have reciprocity with Merrill or Medford, so with this membership, you can hear concerts there too. It’s such a good thing for Antigo.”
Kelli Risnes, a representative from Allied Concert Services, suggested Kaefer’s show alone is more than worthwhile.
“She has video projection as an aspect of her performance. I know she uses photos from her family, but it’s also kind of general ones from the era that you might see in Time Magazine of people coming home and hugging and reuniting. It’s neat to hear her grandmother’s stories through the performance. Both my husband and I had redhead grandmas of the era and her grandma was a redhead too. So even though I didn’t live through the World War II era, my grandparents did, so it brings back other memories because of that,” Risnes said.
Kaefer said another group of people that mostly did not actually live through World War II has often been unexpectedly drawn to her show.
“Some of the veterans who felt really moved by parts of the show a lot of times have been men who served in Vietnam,” she said. “I think the homecoming that the GIs got after World War II was very different than what the Vietnam vets experienced when they came home, and I think there is something very moving about that, about them just sort of remembering how hard it was for them when they came home.”
Kaefer said her show has tended to make the deepest impressions on people from smaller cities like Antigo.
“The difference between doing this kind of show for a jaded New York City kind of audience compared to an audience from a smaller town where there are in fact lots of veterans in the audience every night has honestly been wonderful,” Kaefer said. “I always go out to the lobby after the show and the people that want to share their stories with me about their own service or their parents’ or their grandparents’ service, it tends to kind of shake loose a lot of stories and memories for people, and I really love hearing about that.
“One woman who was really moved by the show, her father had died in World War II and she never met him or knew him, but she grew up with all the stories about him and the music from that time. So I think there’s something that kind of gets past people’s defenses with this music. They just don’t write them like that anymore.”
Note: For more information about the Antigo Music Association’s concert series or to inquire about a 2024-2025 season membership, go to concertassociation.net/AntigoWI or call Dede Cromer at 715-623-5133.
Most Popular
Comments / 0