Hmmm, I wonder how this would play out...

Hmmm, I wonder how this would play out today?

For four days Mrs. Helen Zuhars Goad MacDowell pondered a question that few women have ever had to decide: which of her two husbands did she want most? Her dilemma stemmed from the fact that the Japanese had held her first husband, Army Air Forces Lieut. Harold Goad, a prisoner without notifying the U.S. He had been listed as missing in action for a year after his bomber exploded over Burma. Last fall, the War Depart ment officially pronounced him dead, and two months later Mrs. Goad was married to Ensign Robert A. MacDowell, U.S.N.R.

Then, a fortnight ago, at Long Beach, Calif., she got numbing news — her first husband had been found alive and well in a Rangoon hospital.


See:

A Woman's Choice - TIME

 

On the flip side, in the July 9th, 1945 Miscellany section of the Time magazine:

Close Call. ​

In Albuquerque, N. Mex., Weldon Owens, witness at a wedding, signed on the wrong line, had to get a court order to unmarry him! ​

 

That should be a lesson in tolerance!!! I don't think I would have handled it that way. I am pretty sure there would be an Ensign getting fitted for new teeth after his jaw healed and my "wife" would be looking for a new place to live!!!

A much better man than me

On an administrative note: Did she have to repay any death benefits?

 

That is an interesting question, the short article didn't have anything to illuminate that little problem.

 

10 G's back in 1945 was a grip of cash.

 

That is true Brad, as $1.00 in 1945 had about the same buying power as $12.13 in 2010.

 

Good point Lou, and then the War Department had only declared him "dead" officially a few months before she married the Navy officer too.

She may not have received any substancial amount between the time of her remarriage and the status of her first husband became known!

 

Hmmmm good points. It seems once he was declared dead who ever his beneficiary was would be entitled to his final pay and death benefits. Regardless of the monetary issue; "Jody" still gets a busted jaw....