Silent Wings Museum<\/a> in Lubbock, said, \u201cto have to pay attention to the bag your commodity comes in \u2014 your seed, flour, sugar \u2014 is going to feed being able to make clothing because that\u2019s not something you can just go down and purchase ten yards of something.\u201d<\/p>\nWhile parents and spouses knew why rationing was necessary, it was up to them to teach their children about the sacrifices being made.<\/p>\n
That\u2019s the topic of this year\u2019s featured exhibit at the Silent Wings Museum: how families used toys and games to teach responsibility and sacrifice for the greater good.<\/p>\n
\u201c…sacrificing that so your glider pilot, who was about to fly to Sicily over the Mediterranean, could have a life preserver on,\u201d McCullar said.<\/p>\n
Little children may not have understood why their breakfast didn\u2019t have any sugar in it or why they had to walk everywhere instead of taking a car. That\u2019s where toys and games came in to help explain the war effort.<\/p>\n
McCullar assembled this exhibit by hand, showing how families used creative methods to help children understand their role in supporting the war.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt\u2019s like Yahtzee, but it\u2019s called \u2018Winnit,\u2019\u201d she said, laughing as she indicated a game inside a display case. \u201cTalk about an overt way of telling your kids what you\u2019re up to.\u201d<\/p>\n
The museum tells the story of how glider pilots delivered men and munitions across Italy, France, Germany, and Southeast Asia while their families cut back on sweets and played with wooden toys.<\/p>\n
\u201cThere are people who are manufacturing wooden toys during World War II, but your ingenuity comes into play, so if you want a little wooden toy to play with, you\u2019ll make it,\u201d McCullar said.<\/p>\n
Even the pilots were playing games with a message. Playing cards had silhouettes of allied and enemy aircraft on the back instead of traditional designs.<\/p>\n
Some special gifts were made in West Texas. In the early days of the glider program in Lubbock, the building that now houses the Silent Wings Museum served as the South Plains Army Flying School, one stop along a pilot\u2019s path to service.<\/p>\n
\u201cA student glider pilot bought this at the PX,\u201d she explained, gesturing to a red stuffed animal with \u2018SPAFS\u2019 and \u2018Lubbock, Texas\u2019 sewn into it, \u201cand sent it home to somebody and made a connection with them even from far away.<\/p>\n
\u201cThat little kid didn\u2019t know exactly what SPAFS meant,\u201d she continued, \u201cbut \u2018Uncle Joe sent this home to me, and I know that he\u2019s still thinking about me, so I\u2019ll keep thinking about him,\u2019\u201d<\/p>\n
The United States\u2019 rationing programs lasted after the war, allowing the Allies to rebuild Europe and Asia through 1947. Those five years of sacrifice on the battlefield and at home showed the determination, ingenuity, and grit that laid the foundation for today.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe all stand on the shoulders of others and we stand on the accomplishments of others,\u201d McCullar said. \u201cThe ability to understand and have a bit of empathy for the things that happened during World War II and the things the glider pilots were fighting for has an impact on what our mindset is today and what we think of ourselves as a nation.\u201d<\/p>\n
While the soldiers ultimately won the war, it was these toys and games that helped their families understand how and why they volunteered to go fight it.<\/p>\n
The Silent Wings Museum<\/a>\u2019s featured exhibit is open to the public through the end of April.<\/p>\nCopyright 2026 KCBD. All rights reserved.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"LUBBOCK, Texas (KCBD) – Americans have felt the pain of inflation and supply shortages in their everyday lives,…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":188958,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[16],"tags":[168,170,169],"class_list":["post-188957","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-lubbock","tag-lubbock","tag-lubbock-headlines","tag-lubbock-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/188957","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=188957"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/188957\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/188958"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=188957"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=188957"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=188957"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}