Berlin Airlift
Juanita's Story
by
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At that moment Juanita knew her mother was dead. She was staring out of the upstairs window of her bedroom when she saw one of her mother’s best friends and her oldest sister holding each other and crying. Looking up at the window and seeing Juanita crying her sister hurried to her side confirming Juanita’s worst suspicions. They held each other and cried. Earlier that morning, white roses had been handed to Juanita and her sisters as they entered the little Baptist church on the outskirts of Oklahoma City. It was Mothers Day 1941. "Please, I need a red rose," Juanita said. "My mother is alive." Searching desperately for a red rose Juanita was told there were none available. Even though her mother was deathly ill Juanita still had hope. Juanita was barely fifteen when her forty-one year old mother died from cancer of the uterus. Her mother had been told that it would be necessary to surgically remove her cancerous uterus four years prior to her death. Instead, she opted to have radium treatments as her own mother had told her she would be like a man if she had her uterus removed. Many times at night Juanita would hear her mother cry out in pain and run to her bedside asking if she could help. Her mother would say, ‘Go back to bed, honey. I’ll be all right.’
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About the Book
Berlin Airlift is essentially the story of Juanita’s growth from a girl to a woman, with the necessary pain and guilt, happiness and tragedy; beauty mixed with ugliness that goes along with that. This growth plays itself out in a Europe devastated by war, and more specifically within the military confines of an American base in Germany, where Juanita is confined physically by the base; emotionally by her possessive husband and her rigid role as a military housewife; and sexually by her own innocence. The explosive scene at the end of the novel, which nearly kills Juanita perfectly, parallels the violence embodied by World War II. Juanita’s survival out of the devastation is a testament to her will to survive, as well as to the experiences she has gained in Germany. Berlin Airlift, then, becomes a metaphor for Juanita’s own "lifting" of herself out of a culture which demanded obedience and subordination at all costs. Juanita is feisty and demure, tough and sexy, and open as well as innocent and is a character we are willing to follow to her ultimate conclusion. Juanita’s story takes on added significance as we begin to realize that she stands not only for herself bur for the generation of women who, while supporting their husbands at war, managed to pull themselves out of their roles as harried wives and mothers to women who would speak for themselves, determine their own future, as well as provide for their families.
About the Author
Cleita Karns was born and raised in Oklahoma City. She married after graduating from high school to an airman and traveled over the United States and Europe. During that time she gave birth to one boy and one girl. After divorcing her first husband she raised her two children alone for eight years prior to marrying her second husband to whom she was happily married to 34 years prior to his death. The past 34 years she has been a real estate broker in Clearwater, Florida where she presently resides. Several years after her husband died she was compelled to write her story called Berlin Airlift (Juanita’s Perils). Cleita is a first time novelist but plans to write a sequel, or continuation of Juanita’s life after Charles.