Mary Kane Bidwell, 97, Commanded WWII Women’s Shopping Corps
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Mary Kane Bidwell, who died Monday at age 97, took it upon herself during World War II to organize Servicemen’s Service Inc., which dispatched an army of society ladies to New York department stores to do holiday shopping for men on the front lines of battle.
Each day, especially in the weeks leading up to Christmas, Easter, and Mother’s Day, Bidwell’s shopping service office at the Navy League House on East 61st Street received hundreds of letters with purchase orders and payments. Many of the items ordered were for the servicemen themselves, such as sleigh bells for a corporal whose job it was to pass out gifts to troops overseas and a “war fiddle” ordered by a sailor on sub patrol. An intrepid shopper searched second-hand shops for two days before locating a violin within the sailor’s budget, $30.
Mostly, servicemen ordered presents for their loved ones at home – lacy nightgowns, candy, and cosmetics were popular items for wives and sweethearts. “My girl is debonair but not flamboyant,” wrote a soldier from a training camp. “Please try and select an umbrella that will match her personality.”
The service also purchased items for British, Canadian, and Australian servicemen, who tended to order dowdier stuff, like bolts of dress material and thread and needles.
Clients were ecstatic. In a letter written in 1944 while “flying back from Germany at 10,000 feet,” a flier said, “To show our appreciation, we dropped a 500-pound bomb on our target, with ‘for the ladies at the Servicemen’s Service’ chalked on its side.”
Mary Kane was born in New York City to a socially prominent family, attended the Randall McIver School (later absorbed by Dalton),and was presented to society at Sherry’s in 1926.
In 1928, she married J. Truman Bidwell, a great dancer who, she liked to say, “literally swept me off my feet. “Bidwell was a young man on the move, a venture capitalist at the height of the Depression who later became a stockbroker and was eventually elected chairman of the board of governors of the New York Stock Exchange.
Bidwell had a single year of college, where she studied journalism, and for a time wrote a feature called “Around New York with Mary Bidwell,” which was syndicated to newspapers in the Midwest. She had two children and became involved in the endless round of society tea parties, luncheons, and balls held for charities.
Bidwell became involved with the Women’s Council of the Navy League at the urging of a personal friend, Rear Admiral Roscoe H. Hillenkoetter. (He later became the first director of the CIA)
The first idea for the shopping service was a booth at Saks Fifth Avenue, which opened in June 1942. Bidwell and several lady friends who staffed it were surprised to find that most servicemen preferred to do their own shopping, unassisted.
Within months, Bidwell hit on a customer base with a greater need: men who couldn’t travel to shops. In October 1942 the Navy League printed up 1,500 posters sporting a shopper in a crisp, light-blue uniform, hands on hips, ready to take on the nation’s wartime shopping needs. “We Do Your Shopping For You, Buy Your Presents … Tell Us What You Want To Give, We Do The Rest.” Among the shopping service’s slogans: “I will shop for you and yours” and “It can’t be found but here it is.”
Servicemen’s Service was immediately popular, and its shopping force of society ladies quickly grew to 120 from 20. By 1945, Bidwell estimated it had received over 100,000 requests for Easter, with more pouring in for Mother’s Day. After the war ended, demand slackened and Bidwell announced that the service would continue to take orders only through Christmas of 1945. In an article from September 8, 1945, the New York Times noted that orders for postwar goods had changed. No longer were they mainly tokens of long-distance courtship. Now they were more practical things like electric appliances and “building plans from men thinking in terms of the postwar civilian home.”
Bidwell later became involved with Episcopalian charities and for many years served as president of Dana House, a home for unwed mothers on the Upper East Side. She also served on the boards of the Arthritis and Rheumatism Foundation, the New York Infirmary, and the Traveler’s Aid.
In 1962, her husband was indicted for tax evasion and was forced to resign his position at the stock exchange. In testimony that made headlines that December, Bidwell explained that she routinely kept thousands of dollars stashed in a safe-deposit box and around her home that the family spent on tax-deductible expenses. The federal jury accepted her testimony as the source of the family’s excess cash, and her husband was acquitted. He died in 1987.
Mary Kane Bidwell
Born February 22, 1907, in New York; died December 21, 2004, at her home in Manhattan; survived by her son, J. Truman Bidwell Jr., her daughter, Barbara Bidwell Manuel, four granddaughters, and 10 great-grandchildren.