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Because her brother was serving in the military when corn planting time came in 1942, fourteen-year-old Doris Mears took on that job on the farm her parents, Mr. and Mrs. J.D. Mears, owned in Robertson County. Doris and her younger sisters, May and Bobbie Nell, also tended a flock of chickens and did a great deal of planting, weed chopping, and cultivation with a hand-pushed plow on the family's one-acre garden. It was estimated at the time that twenty percent of farm women worked in the fields during peacetime. That figure doubled to forty percent in 1942 and was expected to double again in 1943. These figures present a very graphic picture of the effect that World War II had upon rural Texas women in the 1940s.
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With the outbreak of World War II and the entry of most young men into military service, most rural Texas women took on new responsibilities. Mrs. D.B. Bennet of the Chapman Ranch community in Navarro County learned to drive the tractor so that she could help her husband cultivate the 126 acres of land he regularly farmed with the help of their two sons. Mrs. Bennet did have to let much of her housework go undone during the heaviest part of the field work. Even though she enjoyed the field work and did not find it unduly difficult, she did indicate that she would be glad when her sons returned from the war so she could devote her efforts to the house.
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