In May 1944 Red Cross officials in Orr announced the completion and shipment of 900 surgical dressings 10 days ahead of their deadline.

The preceding are just a few examples of the home-front contributions to America’s war efforts – contributions that were largely never sought or provided during subsequent wars.

Also that month, civil defense officials praised the way in which Virginia residents performed in a test blackout and announced that Hibbing’s ability to cut down its night- time light exposure was to be tested the following month. State civil defense officials actually reviewed the Virginia test from an airplane.

Though such defenses against enemy attacks proved to be unnecessary, local residents and civil defense officials had no way of knowing that.

Many newspaper and magazine advertisements of the time carried a patriotic and support-the-war theme. An ad in the Cook News-Herald in January 1943 showed a farmer milking a cow and carried the message: "Cook – war production center." The ad copy talked of the need for civilians to produce all kinds of foodstuffs as part of the war effort.

The Feb. 18, 1943, edition of the News-Herald had four war-related articles on its front page. One announced a plan to curb the purchase of canned goods and another made a plea for donation of hunting knives to be sent to soldiers. A third article announced the local goal of $500 to be raised that year for the Cook Red Cross chapter, while the final article saluted local residents whose families had sent sons off to war or were contributing on the home front.

An advertisement in the Hibbing Daily Tribune on Sept. 18, 1943, pleaded with local loggers to step up their production of pulpwood for the war effort, exhorting them to "Swing your axe for victory!"

Another 1943 article noted proudly that 19 young women from Chisholm were serving in various branches of the armed forces. The unusual role assumed by women during World War II was saluted in that same edition of the Hibbing Daily Tribune in an article that noted that many women were employed as "watchmen" to guard against fires in the region's forests.