Lydia Hubbard, granddaughter of artist Lydia Brewster Hubbard, grew up in Cornwall. She worked as a teacher prior to World War II, living with her uncle’s family in New Haven.

Lydia signed up to work for the American Red Cross during the war, spending 19 months in Hawaii and Saipan.

Lydia Hubbard, May 1944, in a scrapbook kept by Emily Marsh.
(Collection of Cornwall Historical Society)

Lydia Hubbard’s Military and Naval Welfare Service badge, 1944-45.
(Collection of Cornwall Historical Society)

Lydia Hubbard, January 1945. From a scrapbook kept by Emily Marsh.
(Collection of Cornwall Historical Society)

In January 1945, a newspaper photographed Lydia while she was stationed on Saipan, one of the Mariana Islands. The islands, previously held by Japan, were seized by the U.S. in 1944. The planes that dropped the atomic bombs on Japan in 1945 took off from one of the Mariana Islands.

Lydia returned to the United States in September 1945, first to San Francisco, then home to Cornwall. She returned to teaching after the war and married Hans Wolf in 1952.