The May 28th Burlington (Vt) Free Press had an article by Wilson Ring, AP.
In the fall of 1942, there was a scrap metal drive in Vermont's Lake Champlain Islands and 13-year-old Baker, a seventh grader at Grand Island Grammar School was chosen by her classmates to represent the school at the christening of a Liberty Ship in Portland, Maine, named after the 30th president, Calvin Coolidge who was also a resident of Vermont. It had been built in 69 days.
Students across Vermont had been collecting scrap metal for the war effort, and, on average, collected 168 pounds per student. Her father donated a large piece of equipment and, as a result, the 31 students in her two-class, one-room school had 6,880. Jeannine, and the second and third ranked collectors in the state were on hand for the commissioning.
Jeannine Dubuque donated the bottle she used and the wooden box to the Historical Society Museum in Montpelier along with a scrapbook of clippings.
The War at Home. --Da Coot
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