...During World War II The Breeze was owned by C.N. (Clyde)
“Breezy” Brust and his wife, Marie. The paper was solidly behind the war, with
stories about rationing and war bonds, a weekly service news column – “With the
U.S.A. Colors” – that had small items about who had been home on leave, or who
was where and what they were doing, and even ads, such as one for the
Kuner-Empson farm implement company that had the headline: “You can kill Nazis
with a plow” and talked about farming’s importance in the war effort.
Then, just as 1943 began, on the front page of the Jan. 28
issue, in the upper left corner, was a headline: “Milliken’s First War Casualty
Reported is Private Ralph C. Stroh.”
“The cruel hand of war struck near home,” the short,
half-dozen graph story started, “when it was announced by the War Department
Monday that Private Ralph Stroh, son of Mr. and Mrs. Conrad Stroh living north
of Milliken, had been killed ‘in defense of country’ on November 26th.”
And, almost heartbreakingly, on the other side of the front
page, another headline: “Brother of Mrs. Jack Gilbreath was killed in Southwest
Pacific.”
Walter Weglin, 25, (from the neighboring town of) Greeley,
the brother of Marie Gilbreath of Johnstown, was killed in action Dec. 2 and
his parents were notified Tuesday, the story said.
Within 24 hours the community found out two young men had
died. Weglin and Stroh had been inducted at the same time, trained together in
Australia, and served in New Guinea “and were close buddies” the stories said.
Walter’s mom was home alone when she received the news, her
husband working more than an hour away in Denver, “and Mary was taken
immediately to Greeley by her husband and expects to remain with her mother
indefinitely.”
The day after the paper came out, Ralph Stroh was buried at
the United Brethren Church. In the next week’s issue of The Breeze the funeral
was recounted under a headline: "Memorial Service here largely attended by
sorrowing friends.”
The church was filled to capacity “by bereaved relatives and
friends of the young man,” the story reported. “In honor of the young soldier,
the flag was at half-mast in Milliken and the schools there dismissed for the
afternoon.”
The story also reported the comments of George Z. Mellen who
spoke at the service, though it makes no mention of his connection to either
the Stroh family or the community. Perhaps it was so deep nobody needed to be
told.
Under the subhead “Heroism” he was quoted saying, “The most
tragic aspect of war has come to us. Two of our own boys, known and loved by
all, have made the supreme sacrifice.
“The people of Johnstown and Milliken are justly proud of
them and pay high tribute to their heroism,” Mellen said. “Our profound
sympathies are extended to their immediate families, and we feel a deep
obligation to them, acknowledging an indebtedness that can never be paid. We
can only strive to be worthy of their sacrifice.”
In 2011, on Memorial Day, the town of Milliken dedicated a
memorial to the 'sons of Milliken' who had died in wars over the years. The
reporter who wrote the story talked with Ralph Stroh’s sister, Frances (Stroh)
Farnsworth.
Farnsworth, then 89, described her brother as “a beautiful
man with a head of unruly hair, big brown eyes and a tender spirit. ‘I just
don’t know what to say about him, because in my idolized eyes he was perfect,’”
she said.
She called him “her best friend” and talked about his
extreme intelligence and delightful sense of humor. He had a short but
successful career as a boxer before volunteering and going into the Army in
January of 1942 at age 26.
“It was a surprise to us,” Farnsworth said. “Of course, the
whole war was a surprise to us. Farm boys were the salt of the earth and we
were told they wouldn’t be drafted because of that … But of course Ralph
volunteered.”
News of his death came over the telephone as then
20-year-old Frances and her mother sat in their kitchen planning her upcoming
wedding.
“It was just an ordinary day until the phone rang and life
was never the same anymore,” she said.
Asked the classic ‘what if’ question, Ralph Stroh’s sister
said if her brother had made it back from the war, “I think he would have
stayed on the farm. And he probably would have gotten married, too, and had a
hundred children.”
And there have been others. At the same ceremony, Virginia
(Belo) Martinez shared her memories and grief about her brother, John, who
joined the U.S. Navy and died in October of that same year – the third death
the communities had to endure – when his crew failed to take off from an
aircraft carrier, plunging into the Pacific Ocean. His body was never found.
“I don’t remember much about him,” Virginia, who was 8 when
her brother died, said, “because I was so young. But I do remember him teaching
me how to tie my shoes. And he would always brush my hair before school.”
And there was John Robert “Fini” Velasquez, of Johnstown,
who was killed in the spring of 1968 in Vietnam. He was the first, and only
casualty from the community in that war.
His sister, Gloria, grew up to be a professor of modern
languages and literature teacher in California and a well-known poet. In 2008,
I wrote a story when she was trying to start a scholarship at the local high
school in her brother’s name.
“He remains forever just a kid,” I wrote in the lede.
“Frozen in the amber of grief over a life lost too soon. After nearly four
decades, eyes now framed with wrinkles have to squint when they look back to
recall when he was alive, but even today, tears still come when they do.
“But perhaps, his memory will help send another minority
young man or woman off to college, rather than to war.”
Gloria’s brother dropped out of school in the seventh grade.
He enlisted in the Marines when he was 17. His mother had to sign the papers to
let him.
In part, Velásquez believes, her brother chose to join the
Marines because he felt the door to education was closed to him as a minority,
and the military was a way out of the fields and the farm labor he had grown up
doing.
“In a novel I’m working on, I’m trying to capture the
frustration he felt,” she said. “He didn’t feel valued in school and sort of
felt pushed out and into the working world. At that time, what they now call
the ‘push-out rate’ for Chicano males was extremely high.”
Her brother, 11 months older than her, was a smart young
man, Velásquez said.
“He was so young,” she said. “He was proud that he was
serving his country, but I think it was that he had dropped out of school,
there weren’t any jobs, and he felt the doors weren’t open to him for that
chance at an education. Look at the long history of the Chicanos in the
military and I think many of them were frustrated like that and falsely
believed they’d have better opportunities if they joined.”
Jesse P. Molinar Sr. of Johnstown is Johnny’s uncle. His
sister is Johnny’s mom. Nobody called him John, or Johnny though, he said.
People called him “Fini.”
“His dad used to always say ‘Que finito es mi hijito,’ (“How
very fine my baby is”), and it sort of stuck,” Molinar said. “It started out as
finito, and then just got shortened to Fini.”
About a dozen years older than his nephew, Molinar remembers
pushing him around in a carriage when he was a baby – and partying with him
when they were young men.
“He lived a fast life. He lived the way he wanted to live,
and he liked to party,” Molinar said. “Maybe he knew something; that he didn’t
have a lot of time. When he came home on leave before he left for Vietnam, we
went to Juarez together.” Molinar pauses for a moment.
“We had a pretty good time,” he continues with a laugh,
leaving it at that.
“I think he joined the Marines because back then things were
pretty slow, and if a kid didn’t finish school, that, the military, was a route
to take.”
On that trip to Juarez, Molinar recalls, “Fini told me ‘You
know uncle, I got a feeling that I won’t make it back.’” I told him not to
worry about it.
“My sister and her family were living over by the drug
store. My brother-in-law always had the greatest magazines to read, so they’d
leave the door open, or I’d use my key to get in to read when they weren’t
home. I was sitting there one day when outside a car door slammed and I looked
out the window. There were two Marine sergeants and I thought, ‘Oh my god.’
They said Fini was hurt pretty bad. I asked if he was going to make it, and one
shook his head no.
“I had to tell my sister,” he said.
Velásquez, who had just recently been promoted to Lance
Corporal, was with his mortar unit April 30, 1968, when a shell exploded during
firing. He was burned over more than 90 percent of his body and lingered for
nearly a week before he died on May 6.
“You know, I remember something else about that time he came
home on leave before going to Vietnam,” Molinar said. “We went to Gilcrest to
drink some beers, and we saw a kid Fini knew. Man, he was a big kid,
six-foot-two, and I don’t know how much he weighed. They called him Bullwinkle.
“The kid was getting ready to graduate from high school, and
he was saying he was going to join the Marines just like Fini had. Fini tried
to talk him out of it.
“You know, I heard later that he did join the Marines, and he
was killed in Vietnam.”
Memories of her brother haunt the pages of Velásquez’s
writing.
One poem, “Black Shoes,” was the one she chose to read in
2005 when she was selected as San Luis Obispo’s eighth Poet Laureate. It’s the
one that’s been printed widely, bringing the memory of her brother to an
international audience. It’s the one about the box that came home with his
personal effects after he was killed:
Just another pair of black shoes,
Vietnam shoes,
Fini’s shoes
stained with blood,
the stench of war,
mom’s piercing cries,
dad’s alcoholic eyes,
Louie’s broken heart
and my wounded soul
as I stare day after day
at those old, black shoes
sitting in my closet,
waiting,
hoping for your return.
Gloria Velásquez said in the story that she knows her
brother will only return in her heartbroken dreams. By starting the scholarship
in his memory, she said, maybe someone else’s son and brother might have the
chance she feels he never got, and maybe not have to bargain their life for the
chance to get ahead.
