Today is the 100th Anniversary of Armistice Day.

This morning, at our Veterans Memorial Park at the Boundary County Library, the American Legion Post 55 along with the Veterans of Foreign Wars held a Veterans Day Ceremony at the 11th hour of the 11th day of the 11th month at exactly 11 a.m.

There were veterans from the Korean, Vietnam and Afghanistan wars. There aren’t many WWII veterans still with us. According to the Department of Veterans Affairs there are around 558,000 American veterans from that war estimated to still be alive as of September 2017. Sadly there weren’t any at our ceremony today.

Retired Lt. Colonel Rae was the guest speaker. He told us how he went with the local veterans organizations to the schools this past week to talk to the kids about their service and let them ask questions. He had some funny questions from the kids to share. Like, “Have you been to area 51”?, He said, “I can’t talk about that”. One kid asked if any of them had ever helped any animals in Africa, since you know you’re “vets”. He also got a thank you note from one student, thanking him and the others for coming and talking to them, and thanking the military, because without them, “Idaho wouldn’t be the free country it is”.

We have several additions to our A Salute to our Military page. As usual we have put this off to the very last minute, or the 11th hour!

Recently an Ashby cousin found our Family Tree online and contacted me. We have been having a great time getting to know each other and trade stories and photographs. Doing some research we found that my second cousin Lynne Abel Allenspach’s father, George Wesley Abel, pictured here with his wife Liz in 1959, served 38 months overseas in the African, Sicilian and Normandy invasions with the Army’s 1st Big Red Division (Big Red 1). Wes died October 20th, 1994. Lynne’s mother Emily Elizabeth (Lizzie) Vinson Abel died May 1st, 1979.

Lynne and I share great-grandparents, John & Emily Ashby.

 

 

We also have these ancestors that served during WWI, to add to the ones already on the page. They are Charles and Joseph Hewitt, they were in their early 20’s when they enlisted. They were sons of Alvin Hewitt and nephews of Cortez and Della (Hewitt) Spears.

 

 

 

 

And on September 7th, 1917 the Clio Messenger announced that Manley A. Spears another nephew of Cortez Spears had been drafted in the first rounds. Manley had reported on his draft card in June of 1917, that his wife and mother were solely dependent on him.

 

 

 

 

 

 

An additional pair of brothers, and cousins of Grandma Daisy; Alfred Lee and Manley J Pringle. also joined. Alfred served in Europe and Manley served with Troop E of the 16th Cavalry.

 

 

 

 

Our last addition this year is Elmer D. Carlson, son of  Carl and Elis Gustafson Carlson of Irwin, Pa. Elmer entered service Sept. 22, 1917. He went to Camp Lee and was attached to the Machine Gun Company, 155th Depot Brigade, 80th Div. He was appointed First Sergeant and was honorably discharged from service in Nov. 1918. When we were in Irwin, PA in 2014 we took this photo of Elmer’s Headstone.

 

As always we are grateful to those that have served and those that are serving today. May God bless them and their families, as they lay aside their lives to protect all our lives–there is no greater love than this.