Thursday, June 1, 1944
Our Army and Navy Boys
Lieutenant Richard H. Currence, of the Navy, is home this week on leave for a few days. He saw his fine new daughter for the first time.
Pvt. Harlan Grimes, of Camp Gordon Johnston, Florida, spent his furlough here with his wife and little daughter, and his mother Mr. W. J. Grimes.
Mr. and Mrs. Edd Boblett, of Millpoint, have learned that their son, Price, has landed safely in England. Two other Millpoint soldiers, Corporal Richard H. Auldridge and Sergeant Wilmer Ruckman, who are also stationed in England had the good fortune to contact each other and were able to spend a short leave together.
Private First Class Pauline G. Barkley, daughter of Mr. and Mrs. C. L. Barkley, of Greenbank, and a member of the Marine Corps Women’s reserve, received her present rate when she graduated recently from the Quartermaster School at Camp Lejeune, North Carolina. She has been assigned to duty at the Marine Barracks, Parris Island, South Carolina
Camp Minnehaha
Famed Resort to be Boys’ Summer Camp
Twenty-five hundred feet above sea level, in the heart of the Monongahela national forest, with its trails, forest lore and wildlife, a famous spring which flows more than a million and a half gallons of water a day, two mountain streams – such is the setting for a summer camp for boys. Camp Minnehaha located at Minnehaha Springs, is 30 miles from Hot Springs, Virginia, and a few miles from Marlinton.
Camp Minnehaha will be an ideal boys’ camp. The once famous inn will be the lodge. Here the boys will eat in what was once a fashionable dining hall. A sunny upstairs room has been made into a dispensary where a registered nurse will reside.
Activities for Camp Minnehaha youths will begin at 7:30 in the morning. Education and recreations will be well balanced. In addition to swimming, there will be horseback riding, riflery, archery, softball, tennis, handicraft, hiking and nature study…
“This is the year to send boys to camp,” Toby Chandler, the Charleston representative said. “Several weeks in the heart of the Monongahela forest, participating in normal boyhood activities will do much for any youth. Boys can get away from the pressure of wartime living…
PERSONAL NOTES
Miss Faye Dunlap, teacher at Brownsburg, will enter summer school at Bluefield State; Mrs. Ida Choice will spend the summer at her home in Asheville, North Carolina; Mrs. Edna C. Knapper will spend the summer in Chambersburg, Pennsylvania, and White Plains, New York, while Sidney T. Goodwyn awaits his country’s call to service.
Boyd Daugherty and Mrs. Lena Smith spent last week in New York, being called there by the death of the former’s brother, Ira Daugherty, a former resident of Marlinton.
Miss Mae Carter, of Baltimore, Maryland, is visiting relatives in the county.
The W.S.C.S. gave a clothes pin social at the home of Mr. Belle Jackson Friday night.
Jack Stewart was at home last week on furlough from camp in Louisiana.
Mr. and Mrs. Hiter Cashwell attended commencement exercises in Charleston where their nephew Houston Jefferson was an honor graduate.
FIELD NOTES
Wade Galford was down from Dunmore Saturday and made report on the rattlesnake situation in the part of the Alleghany Mountain where he ranges sheep. The rattlers there this season are fewer in number but larger in size. The blacksnakes are unusually plentiful and bigger. One day last week son Ben went out to salt and check up on the sheep. At the usual soddy place, Ben routed out a tremendous rattler. The snake got away by going into a hollow log. On getting home, son Ben reported the experience to father Wade. In the family council Wade decided that rattler had to be killed, for the lambs like to creep into that hollow log on hot days for shade, and to get away from the gadding flies. So, next morning Wade and his two sons, Ben and Tom, armed with a 22 rifle go snake hunting. There was no sign of the snake about the log. By circling the ground carefully, the rattler was found near another hollow log, about a hundred yards from the place he was left the day before. In coming in, Wade had walked within 20 feet of the snake. At the end of this hollow log there was a grouse nest with a dozen eggs in it. The rattler was keeping the mother grouse from the nest, and she was keeping the snake too busy to eat the eggs. This was a big black rattler, with 12 rattlers on his string. His skin was muddy and dirty. He had not been out of his winter’s den long enough to get a full meal, or to shed off.
Talking about snakes, I have always heard that if you did run across a rattler up in the spruce woods, he would be a big one. Coming across Cheat Mountain at the Kerr Top one day last week, Albert Curry did come across a rattlesnake, and it sure was a big one. This snake was not much over four feet long, but it was big around. This was a black one, totally without the usual markings, and peeled off slick as an onion.
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Raymond Bowers was sweeping in a public building in this town some weeks ago. He came upon a double jointed, high geared spider, plenty quick on its numerous feet. He scooped up the little dickens in a wide mouth bottle, and delivered him to this office. His picture is in the book – a centipede. The bite of all centipedes is poisonous, and the large species is dangerous. The common kind found this far north lives in houses and feeds on flies, roaches and other insects. The book name is scutigera forceps. One scientific writer says its presence in a house should be welcomed, since it can do no harm other than a somewhat poisonous bite. Another equally high authority says he steps on every centipede he finds in his house.
DEATHS
Harlan Elsworth Dean was born November 16, 1921 and died March 3, 1944, aged 22 years, 3 months and 16 days.
He was a soldier in the United States Army. He left for service November 8, 1942, and was only in the army a short time when he was sent to overseas duty. He went to North Africa, from there to Sicily and then to Italy, where he was killed in action…
Harlan is survived by his parents [Mr. and Mr. Guy Dean]: five sisters and one brother: Mrs. Edgar Walton, of Hillsboro; Mrs. Sidney Boyce, Lena, Verlie, Naomi and Lee, at home, and a host of other relatives and friends.
Mr. and Mrs. Dean received the following letter from Harlan’s chaplain:
“As Division Chaplain of the Third Infantry Division to which Private Harlan E. Dean was assigned at the time of his death, I am writing to you to offer my deepest sympathy.
“Private Dean paid a great price that we as a free people might enjoy all those things that make life worth living. By that he showed his intense love for us. “For greater love than this, no man hath, that a man lay down his life for his friends.”
“Not only our Nation, but also our very civilization is deeply indebted to him, a debt we can never repay. Surely God in His infinite mercy has given him the reward he so well deserves.
“Harlan was laid to rest in a beautifully located cemetery that is kept spic and span. Full military honors and religious services, conducted by myself, were rendered at his graveside. I am not allowed to divulge any information other than this to you.
“I assure you that I shall remember your loved one in all my prayers to my dying day. As for yourself, may God grant that your courage in bearing your bereavement be as great as that of Harlan’s in the performance of his duty.” Sincerely yours, Ralph J. Smith
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Brown Morgan Gum, aged 78 years, one month and five days, died at his home in Cass May 20, 1944. On Monday afternoon his body was laid to rest in the Oliver cemetery, the service being conducted from his home by Rev. Quade Arbogast of the Methodist church.
Mr. Gum was married to Elizabet[h] A. Wilfong, October 15, 1895. She preceded her husband in death eleven years ago. Their children are Harry and Harper Gum, both of Cass.