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"My name is Dominick Gadamowitz. I was born in Flushing, New York, in 1918. I was the eldest of my parents' eleven children. Like most of my friends, I had to drop out of school at a young age because of the Great Depression. I was thirteen at the time. Leaving school in 1931 was a damaging but necessary choice. My dad asked me if I would come and work with him on construction sites for three or four days a week. I felt as if I had an obligation to help Pop feed the rest of the family because we were really beginning to feel the effects of the depression."
--Dominick Gadamowitz Dominick Gadamowitz's situation was not uncommon. The director of the American Youth Commission estimated that during the early Depression years "40 per cent of the youth (16-24) in the whole country [were] neither gainfully employed nor in school." In 1932 at least a third of a million children had their education interrupted because local school districts lacked the funds to keep schools operating. The CCC was established to put young men to work and to assist them in developing job skills. The following picture shows young men from Oklahoma enrolling in the CCC.
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| Enrollees in Transit (detail)
Location: Oklahoma
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