Editor’s Note: With America’s entry into the “Great War” in Europe, small town newspaper writer Josephine Lehman left her home in Ionia, Michigan in 1918 to work for the War Department in Washington, D.C. In 1926 she got a job as a researcher and ghostwriter for renown author Lowell Thomas. Her first assignment was to go to Europe and track down both English and German U-Boat commanders. In 1933 she and her new husband, Reynold Thomas, moved to Harvey Cedars to “wait out the Depression.” They never left.

Her life story is recounted in the recent book “Josephine: From Washington Working Girl to Fisherman’s Wife. A Memoir 1917 to 1959.”