The saxophone world lost someone earlier this month—someone who at one time brought a bit of home to the men and women who served the United States Of America during WWII.
According to her obituary in the November 20 edition of the Chicago Tribune, Laura Mae Daniels passed away on November 8, at the Medical University of South Carolina in Charleston, due to complications of a stroke she suffered 6 years ago. She was 87 years old at the time of her death.
Daniels was born in Chicago, and began playing saxophone while she was in her teens. At the time she played with a neighbourhood band. After she graduated high school, she joined a group of her former classmates in the Sharon Rogers All-Girl Band, which was formed during WWII. That band toured the US playing big band music.
The USO was so impressed by the band, that it booked them to play as part of the same circuit that included the likes of Bob Hope and Danny Kaye. The band played military bases, hospitals, and camps in the Pacific theatre. It was during one of those USO tours that Ms. Daniel’s life was forever changed.
In January 1946, only 5 months after the atomic bomb was dropped on Hiroshima, the Sharon Rogers All-Girl Band was travelling on a plane that had to make a crash landing in the Sea of Japan. Although everyone on the plane survived, and was eventually picked up by a Japanese fishing boat, some band members were injured in the crash, and ended up in a hospital in Hiroshima.
Ms. Daniels was profoundly affected by seeing the destruction in Hiroshima, and witnessing first-hand the suffering of the victims of the bombing:
The experience affected her so deeply that during the 1960s she formed a Peace Coalition at First Congregational Church of Wilmette, where she was a member, and marched on Washington to protest the Vietnam War.
“She described Hiroshima as horrific, that what she saw there should never, ever happen again,” her brother Bob said.
Source: Obituary for Laura Mae Daniels, former Winnetka teacher and USO saxophone player
In plane crashes there are sometimes people who are left unscathed. Laura Mae Daniels was one of them. Remarkably, she survived the plane crash with not a scratch on her.
Source: Amazon.com
Ms. Daniels’ experiences during that remarkable time of her life, were an integral piece of the research conducted by author Pat McGrath Avery. McGrath Avery’s 2009 book titled: The Sharon Rogers Band: Laughed Together, Cried Together, Crashed and Almost Died Together, is the band’s story.
After the war, Ms. Daniels first became a lab technician, but then went to college to earn her teaching credentials. She taught chemistry in private and public schools until her retirement.
