As it did throughout America, World War II affected every facet of life in Franklin County, Kansas, from 1941-45. The experience there was captured by a local photographer, J.B. Muecke of Ottawa, whose images have been preserved by the Franklin County Historical Society and supplemented with newspaper articles, oral histories, and artifacts.
 
Virgil Dean, longtime editor of the quarterly Kansas History: A Journal of the Central Plains, draws from Muecke’s images in an illustrated discussion of life on local home front during the war. Dean, who holds a doctorate in history from the University of Kansas, has published four books and taught Kansas history at Washburn University and KU.