Kewaunee County, Ben Franklin & Veterans' Day

Well over 200 years ago founding father Benjamin Franklin said if we give up our liberty for security, we are neither free nor secure. That isn’t the exact quote, but rather the gist of what has been repeated so many ways over all those years. Pearl Harbor survivor Firman Balza says just about the same thing to the groups to which he speaks. It’s as true today as it was during Franklin’s time during the American Revolution. It takes a veteran to be in Franklin’s league!

Kewaunee County’s earliest residents were primarily Germans, Bohemians and Belgians with smatterings of Norwegians, French and Polish. Though most of them had never heard of Ben Franklin at immigration,  Balza’s ancestry surely includes somebody in that mix. Many of the immigrants came from places where nobody talked about giving up liberty because there was so little to give up.

From its earliest days, county citizens were always there to defend that liberty. Joseph McCormick was not a resident of the county in 1834 when he and a party of men from Manitowoc sailed north to explore the (now) Ahnapee River. Wisconsin had not yet achieved territorial status and statehood would take 14 more years. McCormick never envisioned a county named Kewaunee would be created in 1852, and it was 20 years later when he returned to settle on the Kewaunee-Door County line.

McCormick was Maj. Joseph McCormick, veteran of the War of 1812. He is the only known veteran of that war to be buried in Kewaunee County. McCormick served in the Wisconsin Assembly and left his mark. He died in Ahnapee and was buried in the Evergreens in a spot said to be unknown, however his great-grandson Ray Birdsall and Ray’s sister put a stone on the spot some years ago. Birdsall’s ancestors include the Perrys. Matt Perry was a Civil War musician in Co. E. History tells us he fifed “The Girl I Left Behind Me” while the company paraded in the streets of Ahnapee before leaving on the Comet. Another Perry, Ralph, was wounded in the Argonne Forest of France, and died on November 22, 1918. The Record Herald said Perry gave his life to end the world domination ambition of the “German junker.” Following his family line, Mr. Birdsall is also a veteran

German immigrants Magnus Haucke and Henry Baumann both served in the Civil War. Haucke enlisted in Milwaukee and Baumann was a Kewaunee County conscript. At the war’s end, Haucke joined his family which had relocated to Ahnapee sometime earlier. Baumann arrived in Wolf River in 1854. The two met when Haucke began courting Baumann’s daughter. Both men continued service to their country by giving to their community on the village council, in the first fire department, political nominating committees and more. They took the opportunities to participate in Wisconsin Civil War encampments. Neither enjoyed robust health following the war and both died early deaths. Kewaunee County’s first Civil War enlistment was that of Chauncey Thayer who also returned. Sixty-five county men died in the war, almost twice as many dying of disease than wounds.

On June 6, 1890, Kewaunee County Board passed a motion to erect a monument to those who had served in the Civil War. Irving Elliot, the county’s last surviving Civil War veteran, lived 38 years following the monument’s dedication on Memorial Day 1899. By the time the Civil War monument was built on the courthouse grounds, the Spanish American War was over and the monument honored the service of those men too. Few from the county fought in that war.

World War l was supposed to be the war to end all wars, but it was not. The Civil War’s Magnus Haucke was Ernest Haucke’s uncle. Ernest’s father was Magnus’ step-brother. Magnus came home but Ernest, left, was the county’s first World War l casualty. Anna Mae Kochmich left teaching for nursing, entering the Reserve Corp of Nurses at Fort Oglethorpe in December 1918. She contracted influenza and died of pneumonia on January 19. As far as anybody knows, she was the first Kewaunee County woman to die while serving in a military capacity. Spanish Flu was sweeping the world and men died in camp before they ever went abroad. Ernest Haucke lived on when American Legion Post 236 was chartered in 1919 and named for him. V.F.W. Post 3392 is named for Perry.
 

Ernest Dionne served on the Western Front in France and brought this silk handkerchief home to his mother who was born in Lille, France. The city in the northwest corner of France was located in French Flanders and on the Western Front during World War l. .

 

Hostak-Novak Post 7152 was named for World War ll men, Norman Hostak and Robert Novak, who were killed in action. Novak’s son and daughter were in grade school with classmates who knew their dad had been killed in the war. Classmates had no idea what it was like to grow up without a dad or to have a mom who was the sole support of the family. Though World War ll altered society, it was a society not kind to women.

Mahlon Dier and Tommy Lang were AHS seniors who had turned 18 and completed their high school courses by the end of the first semester. The young men who were part of the football team in the fall were drafted in spring and never went through graduation ceremonies with their classmates. It wasn’t long before Tommy was killed. Mahlon came home. Because of the paper shortage, Dier’s class didn’t have a school annual, or yearbook. For their 60^th reunion, Dier created one.

Rich Johnson was part of his family’s commercial fishing business before he enlisted in the Navy. Even as a youngster it was not unusual for him to pilot the tug in the fury of Lake Michigan or through its dense fogs. Serving on the Admiral’s flagship, Rich was the lowest member of the bridge watch, the grunt who ran for coffee and carried messages. In a period of heavy seas when the wheelman couldn’t keep the ship on course, Rich volunteered to do it. The Admiral must have had it as he told Rich to take the wheel. No doubt the more senior members of the watch expected a calamity but the young Wisconsin fisherman did indeed hold the ship on course. From then on Rich served as the Admiral’s coxswain when he went go upriver for drinks in the Philippines.

Navy man Frank Schmidt, another commercial fisherman, experienced a horror later seen in movie newsreels. The atomic bomb was being tested in the Pacific and Schmidt volunteered to serve on an observation vessel. He witnessed the total destruction before the bomb was dropped on Hiroshima and Nagasaki. Ed Goetz was training fighter pilots in Alabama. When the U.S. began running out of pilots, Goetz got his notice to leave for combat duty, however he never went because President Truman ordered the dropping of the atomic bomb on Hiroshima. Ed says Truman saved his life. He’ll be 100 on Christmas Eve!

Men enlisted and many more were drafted. Some women enlisted. After the war men got G.I. benefits. The women who served got nothing until Congress decided they had actually contributed and awarded them benefits a few years later. With so many men gone, women stepped into positions that they’d never before held. In addition, women had to keep the home fronts going. Gardens were needed in the Food for Victory programs. Women were encouraged to knit, to roll bandages and to take nursing courses that would help within the community. Lacking today’s conveniences such as indoor plumbing, women took care of the children, kept house, sewed clothing and recycled everything there was to recycle. The only thing different about women in World War ll was that they were also expected to serve in manufacturing jobs, and working married women was largely unknown in Kewaunee County.

Then came Korea. Some call it the forgotten war but maybe it is not understood. The baby boomers and those a little older were in school during that war. It wasn’t history then; it was happening and wasn't in textbooks. Though North Korea is one of the world’s poorest economies, it has the world’s largest standing army and quite frequently makes news rattling its sabers. The U.S. protected South Korea which today is an educated country that enjoys a good economy while being one of the world’s most wired countries. Lyle Brandt, Henry Hohne, Harvey Kudick gave their lives in Korea. Korean War veterans Lloyd Nimmer and Jerry Simonar were two Kewaunee County Korean War veterans nominated with pride for an Honor Flight to Washington.

Algoma residents Jack Rush, Roger Kostka and Steve Perlewitz were killed in action in Vietnam. They are remembered on the wall in Washington, D.C. and were remembered with photos and biographies on the wall created for L-Z Lambeau, a wall also exhibited in the rotunda in the capitol in Madison. Wisconsin Public Television is spearheading an effort to find a picture for every Wisconsin man killed in Vietnam. The pictures will be part of an interactive display in the Vietnam memorial in Washington. Two other Algoma men, Gary Mertens and Bryan Wolter, both lost their lives on active duty, however not in Vietnam.

Since Vietnam, the U.S. has seen other military actions in places such as Grenada and Somalia. There was the first Gulf War which was followed by another in Iraq and Afghanistan. Luxemburg-Casco grads Jesse Thiry and Dean Opicka gave their lives for Iraqi freedom.

Algoma, Carlton, Casco, Kewaunee and Luxemburg all have American Legion Posts full of veterans who remember. They don’t ramble on about themselves or sacrifices they made but they do work toward helping and educating others. To not have been in the military is to not completely understand. Ben Franklin talked about liberty. It is the vets who have given us what we enjoy today. The vets remember. They know who didn’t come back. They know who was a P.O.W., giving them their space, their privacy and their due. The vets understand the issues of mental and physical health, employment and homelessness among the younger veterans while Washington pays lip service and dismisses

Ben Franklin also said, ”Any fool can criticize, condemn and complain and most fools do.” Mr. Balza knows that too, but he doesn’t remind those to whom he speaks.

Picture credits: McCormick stone, T. Duescher; paintings, N. Johnson; Jacksonville National Cemetery photograph by blogger.
Sources: An-An-api-sebe: Where is the River?, c. 2001; Ahnapee Record, Algoma Record Herald; In From the Fields, c. 1995.