The 1940s: Growing up in wartime

The Depression was waning, and Long Island was growing.

In 1940 the population of Nassau was 406,748; Suffolk's was 197,355. People were pouring into these formerly rural counties by the tens of thousands, drawn to jobs in Long Island's booming defense industry. Both Grumman in Bethpage and Republic in East Farmingdale grew exponentially as World War II raged.

Eyes were glued overseas, but there were local tragedies, too. In September 1941, a fighter plane crashed at Jerusalem and Florence avenues in Hempstead, killing three children. Two months later, the LIRR's growing pains turned fatal, when a train-truck collision in Mineola killed seven.

Political bosses in both counties were amassing power. J. Russel Sprague, Nassau's first county executive, won a third term. In Suffolk, W. Kingsland Macy, who in 1946 would win a congressional seat, had reigned as leader of the county's Republican majority since 1926.

With the bombing of Pearl Harbor on Dec. 7, 1941, every life on Long Island changed. Men enlisted in droves. Many women began to work outside the home for the first time, on assembly lines or in aircraft factories, and tended to their victory gardens.

In 1945, the euphoria of the war's end gave way to the sobering realization that Long Island lacked sufficient housing for the returning heroes. The workers who flooded the region for more than 100,000 jobs in the aircraft industry had filled the Island's housing stock to near capacity. But Abe, William and Arthur Levitt had a solution.

The Levitts bought hundreds of acres of potato lands in Island Trees with a big plan - to build 2,000 homes, nearly by assembly line, over a radiant-heat slab instead of a cellar. The houses were ready to rent to veterans for $60 a month in 1947, with a snag - a Town of Hempstead zoning law against houses without cellars. Newsday helped to marshal veterans, who stormed a hearing to get the rule overturned. It was, and the project known as Levittown grew to nearly 100,000 people. Its restrictive racial covenant keeping people of color out of the community had a lasting impact.

But when it came to a population explosion, Long Island hadn't seen anything yet.

-- Melanie Lefkowitz