The Oldest Living Graduate

Ely

Copyright © 2015 LTG William J. Ely.

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ISBN: 978-1-4834-3541-1 (sc)

ISBN: 978-1-4834-3540-4 (e)

Library of Congress Control Number: 2015911798

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Lulu Publishing Services rev. date: 9/15/2015

CONTENTS

Preface

Introduction

Chapter 1 - The Early Years

Chapter 2 - The Formative Years

Chapter 3 - Education And Military Training

Chapter 4 - Working For The Army

Chapter 5 - Helen Mountford Ely

Chapter 6 - World War Ii

Chapter 7 - After The War

Chapter 8 - Retirement - A New Life

Chapter 9 - Double Dam Golf Course

Chapter 10 - Off To Florida

Chapter 11 - People In My Life

Chapter 12 - More Golf

Chapter 13 - Memorials And Celebrations

Chapter 14 - Lessons Learned

Chapter 15 - My Destiny

Epilogue

Addendum - Poetry And Prose

And when our work is done

Our course on earth is run

May it be said Well done,

Be thou at peace.

To

HELEN MOUNTFORD ELY

WHO MADE EVERYTHING POSSIBLE

PREFACE

The United States Military Academy at West Point, New York has a long-standing tradition that dates back to the early part of the nineteenth century. Whenever the alumni assemble at an event such as graduation, Founder’s Day or a class reunion, it is customary to recognize and honor the oldest graduate present. The Association of Graduates maintains an alumni roster and distinguishes the most senior as The Oldest Living Graduate of West Point. When that person dies, this dubious honor is bestowed upon the next in succession after which every member of the Long Gray Line is notified of the honorees name, class and age.

On December 2, 2014, my good friend and West Point classmate Brigadier General Robert Tripp passed away in Oakland, California. On that date, 27 days before my 103rd birthday, because of good luck, good genes, an extraordinary wife and this long-standing tradition, I became The Oldest Living Graduate of West Point. This is the story of my life and the title of this book.

INTRODUCTION

On April 13, 1988, my older and only brother James Harold Ely died suddenly and unexpectedly in Buffalo, New York. Our family and friends gathered in Claysville, Pennsylvania to celebrate and memorialize his wonderful life. There were many recollections of our childhood with memories and adventures long forgotten. The children and grandchildren hung on every word as stories of his past were recounted. I was amazed at the interest and attention. On my way back to our home in Boynton Beach, Florida, I decided that I would put some of those memories of the past into writing so that they would not be forgotten again.

I started this memoir on July 12, 1988, at age 76 and called it Memories. As I delved deeper into the recording of events and happenings of my life, the floodgates opened. One memory would lead to another and each thought elicited a string of recollections that begged to be recorded. My wife was working on her memories at the same time so we had the pleasure of reliving many of those precious moments together. It was a labor of love and remembrance.

Why am I doing this? My wife Helen and I have had long and eventful lives and I feel that we should leave some record of our time on this earth. Our sons and many of our friends think that our story should be published. It is unique. We had 74 years of marriage and more than 200 years of life. Helen passed away in her 100th year and I am still going at 103. Our lives were filled with many wonderful stories, memories, friends and accomplishments. With the encouragement and assistance of our children, friends and many others too numerous to mention, our story will now be told. I particularly want to thank Lori Parent for her patience and hard work transcribing and typing my handwritten notes into a legible document and my son Richard and Lulu.com for bringing the manuscript to life.

This is a story about life, love and luck. It is the record of a man from a modest background who through hard work, good fortune, perseverance and the support of a devoted wife achieved great success and happiness. It is a chronicle about a man who defied the odds and became a Lieutenant General in the US Army, an outstanding amateur golfer and, at 103 years of age, The Oldest Living Graduate of West Point.

CHAPTER

1

THE EARLY YEARS

In the Beginning

I was born December 29, 1911 on a farm near the small town of Sycamore in Greene County, Pennsylvania. I was born in the old farmhouse with Dr. Murray of Nineveh, Pennsylvania and a neighbor’s wife in attendance. I was named and christened Jonas Arthur Ely, in honor of Jonas Ely, my grandfather, a prominent member of the community and the Methodist Church. I have no idea where the Arthur came from. As I will explain later, I came to care less and less for that mysterious name to the point that I legally changed my name to William Jonas Ely in 1934.

My father’s name was James Ross Ely, known generally as Ross for his entire life. He was born on January 17, 1886, one of six sons born on the old farm near Sycamore, Pennsylvania. My mother’s maiden name was Frances Folsom Julia Dillie and she was better known as Floss or Flossie. She was born on February 27, 1886, one of four children born to John and Mary Thompson Dillie in Wind Ridge, Pennsylvania, a small town about ten miles from Sycamore. Dad and Mom were married on March 9, 1909, after she moved from Wind Ridge to live with an aunt about a half-mile from Dad’s home. Soon after their marriage, they went to Colorado but the reason for this trip is unclear. In part, it was possibly to try homesteading, a fairly popular challenge in those days. A more important reason was probably the reported unhappiness of mother’s father with the marriage. His nickname was Horsehead and he was a hotheaded individual.

Little is known about their adventures. They acquired 160 acres of land near Grover in northern Colorado where they built a small cabin, drilled a well for water and remained for about two years. My brother, Jim, was born there on September 5, 1909. (The proximity of that date to their wedding date might also partially explain Horsehead Dillie’s unhappiness and their quick move west.) We have an old photograph of them on a horse drawn wagon loaded with household furniture and supplies, somewhere in Colorado, which indicates that they were not exactly living in clover at that time.

On return to Greene County in 1911, Dad rented a home and farm on Patterson Creek, about two miles from Sycamore. This was a very hilly farm of about a hundred acres on a dirt road, suitable for raising sheep and nothing else.

My memory of my early years is, of course, minimal. I do recall that we regularly attended church on Sunday at the Hopewell Methodist Church. We traveled by horse and buggy over rough roads for about two miles to get there. I can’t recall that I enjoyed it much even though this was almost our only social activity. I was shy and didn’t like all the preening and fawning that was involved. Jonas Ely, my grandfather, was a pillar of the church. I have limited memory of him and none of my grandmother, Nancy. Jonas died October 3, 1923 and Nancy on December 16, 1906.

The photograph on the next page is a picture of the Ely Clan in 1912. I am in the middle on grandfather’s lap. Dad and Mother are in the front row right, my brother Jim on Dad’s leg. At the other end of the front row is my aunt Blanche Hallam, the strong lady whose political connections enabled me to get an appointment to the United States Military Academy at West Point, New York.

Somehow we acquired a collie dog called Lad. He was our constant companion for many years. Whether we were berry picking, looking for groundhogs, looking for tadpoles and frogs, or swimming in the creek, he was constantly with us. I recall one day rather clearly. The entire family was picking berries and Lad was nosing around among the briars nearby. Suddenly, he yelped loudly and jumped from the briars with a Copperhead snake hanging from his nose. Dad looked frantically for something to throw at the snake as it slithered away. I had found a tortoise and was proudly carrying it wherever I went. Dad grabbed it from my hand and threw it at the snake. Both the snake and tortoise quickly disappeared in the briars. Lad’s nose swelled up to many times normal size and he was a very sick dog, but he survived.

We were fortunate to have both a creek running through our property and a natural swimming pool in a bend by a large sycamore. To our young eyes the pool seemed quite large and was a favorite spot in summer for the five Hartzell boys and us. They were sons of our nearest neighbor and were even poorer than we were, I believe. There were a couple of Hartzell girls, but they were never allowed in the pool. Bathing suits were unheard of in those days. I looked at the old pool several years ago and it was probably fifteen feet wide and four feet deep at the widest spot. However, after a heavy rain, the stream could become quite active in the narrow valley. I remember one time when we crossed it too soon after a storm. Jim and Lad crossed easily at the rapids where we normally crossed. I was perhaps five years old and tried to follow. I was knocked down by the water but managed to get across. However, the stream carried my new straw hat, purchased by my mother a couple of days earlier, away. That was a real blow because new things didn’t come very often in those days.

I started school when I was five years old. The schoolhouse was a one room building about one mile up the road. There were only twelve students with one teacher, who handled all grades from first through eighth. How she did it, I do not know, but she was a heroine to her pupils and to the parents in the community.

Getting to and from school was sometimes a problem. In deep snow, Dad would hitch the horses to the sled and take us. I remember one time when there was not much snow, but sleet and rain had fallen on the surface. When we walked, we crossed an open, sloping field near the schoolhouse. The older, heavier lads would stomp their feet through the surface of the icy slope. I tried to follow but because I couldn’t make the needed dents in the surface, I ended up sliding down the slope for a considerable distance before crashing into a tree at the bottom. I’m sure that I was more scared than harmed, but my books and papers were scattered widely.

The Farm in Claysville

In the summer of 1919, we moved from the farm near Sycamore to a farm about two miles south of Claysville, in Washington County. I think that it was because Dad wanted to own rather than rent. He paid $11,500 for the farm, using a loan of $5,000 from his father to help with the purchase. I don’t know how he found this farm, but I do recall looking at it before we moved. Jim and I, intrigued with all the rooms, chased one another through the empty house. I opened the wrong door and went down the pantry stairs headfirst onto the cellar floor. I remember that I had a good headache and was ill for a couple of days but didn’t see a doctor. Many years later, our granddaughter, Danielle, took the same tumble with the same results.

The move from Sycamore to Claysville sounds simple because the distance was only about twenty miles but it was anything but simple. We had sheep, horses, cows, and some pigs, all of which had to be moved on their own feet. This meant driving and controlling them on the twisting country roads. This took several days and the cooperation of neighbors and others along the traveled route.

The new farm clearly had much more to offer than the Sycamore farm. There were about 161 acres on a more frequently traveled (but unpaved) road. With a population of 1250, Claysville was no metropolis but it was only two miles away. It also boasted a good school and most of the retail outlets essential to a farming community. The new farm featured a large tin-roofed barn with plenty of space on the main floor (for storage of hay and farm equipment) as well as a warm basement for cows and sheep. There was a stable for the horses with a loft for storing hay. When Dad bought an automobile, some years later, one corner of the stable became a garage. On the farm we also had a grain house, a corncrib, a pigpen, a chicken house, a washhouse, a smokehouse, and a lean-to for storing wood. There was also, of course, an outhouse.

We soon had a telephone although it was on a party line where everybody could listen to conversations that might interest them. Our ring was three longs and a short. Mother used the phone extensively to talk to her friends in Claysville. Dad used it only for essential calls and his conversations were always short. The rest of us seldom used the phone for any purpose.

My memories of our lives and activities during the next ten years are somewhat jumbled but at the end of that decade, I entered college. My parents were poor and, as a result of that reality, my recollection of our way of life-both the good and the bad-are reflections of that reality. I will not attempt to outline the events and changes of those years in a sequential way but will attempt to recall in topical form - home, work, school, social life and travel - some of the fragments of my memories. I suppose these would be called my formative years; certainly they shaped by attitudes toward many pursuits during the remainder of my life. And certainly they were filled with ups and downs that supposedly help to build character. Unfortunately, I recall more of the dark side of those years than the bright side.

Our new home was on top of the hill with a grand view in all directions. It was an old house with wood siding and no insulation in walls or ceiling; a date of 1849 was inscribed on the west gable that is probably the time when it was built. Space in the house was adequate for four people, but two girls were added to our family soon after we moved to Claysville. One of Mother’s sisters, Lucy Dillie Bryan, died in childbirth and her husband died of pneumonia not long thereafter. As a result, their five children were scattered to the four winds to live with friends and relatives. Jessie Bryan came to live with us in 1921 when she was nine years old and her sister, Esther moved in 1922. These girls were not adopted but lived as foster children in the old farmhouse until they were married. They were much like sisters to Jim and me and helped mother with the many problems of living in that old home. Dad added another bedroom and more storage space in the basement after Jessie and Esther joined the family.

We normally had a nice breeze in the summer but never enough heat in the winter. Initially, the only sources of heat were the stove in the kitchen and the fireplace in the living room. There were small fireplaces in other rooms but we never used them. The fireplace in the living room was especially large with a swinging metal arm on which some cooking was done. Wood was the only fuel that was used initially. One of Dad’s first improvements was to install a coal furnace in the basement with an open grate directly above it in the center of the living room. What a treat it was to come out of a freezing bedroom in the morning and stand on or near that grating. On the colder mornings, the furnace would be stoked so fully that its top was fiery red when you looked down through the grating. But that heat didn’t go far outside the living room so plenty of clothes were necessary. And it certainly didn’t help with the toilet requirements. The outside toilet was about two hundred feet from the house, fully exposed to the freezing winds of winter. The only inside facilities were slop jars in each bedroom which could be used when necessity demanded. When it was cold it was very, very cold.

I can’t remember how we kept our bodies clean in those early years; probably we didn’t. There was no bathtub and no shower. Dad shaved at the kitchen sink and I guess that’s where we washed our hands and faces. I vaguely remember standing in a washtub in the cellar so that may be how we washed our bodies. Modesty was ever present in our home especially insofar as Mother was concerned. I never saw her when she was not fully dressed. She was very shy and hated to have her picture taken at any time. In family pictures, she would often hide her face behind somebody’s head rather than face the camera. She had no reason to be ashamed of her face or figure so I have no explanation for her extreme modesty.

Sex and the activities related thereto were never discussed in our home. I saw the stallions, bulls, boars and rams in action but my parents never discussed what they were up to. I heard rumors of sexual activities of some of the members of my high school class but never knew whether they were true or not.

Initially, the only lighting available in the house was from candles and kerosene lamps. After a few years, Dad worked out an agreement with a couple of neighbors to install a line to connect with a natural gas line about one mile away. This enabled us to have a gas stove and better light and heat in the house. However, under the arrangement, Dad agreed to pay for all the gas delivered to the line other than the gas metered into the neighbors’ homes. Leaks frequently developed in the mile-long line so our heating bills kept increasing. Finally, in about 1947, West Penn Power Co. installed an electric power line from Claysville out into the farmlands, running it through our farm about fifty feet from the house. Soon thereafter, the old house was wired for electricity, with my brother, Jim, assisting extensively in that wiring and the use of natural gas was terminated. At about the same time, a new oil furnace was installed in the basement with ducts leading under the house to almost every room. While not much heat reached the outermost rooms on a cold day, this was a great improvement over the old furnace with the open grill.

Sustenance

Probably some of the clearest memories of my childhood pertain to the food that we ate and the water that we drank. Mother was a great cook and she must have been frustrated at times with her limited resources during these early years of our lives in the Claysville home. We were poor and very dependent on produce from the farm. Dad had good success with a vegetable garden and we ate potatoes in every way that they could be cooked except baked. For some reason, Mother never baked her potatoes. We raised our own chickens so we ate fried chicken and eggs often; but we never ate scrambled eggs. One of my clearer pictures of my mother in action is watching her chop off a chicken’s head in the old woodhouse. She would hold the chicken in her left hand, put its neck on a wood block, neatly chop off the head with the axe in her right hand and then stuff the body quickly in a hole in the woodpile so it couldn’t flop around. Soon thereafter, she would have it in a pail of boiling water and start removing the feathers.

Another of our important sources of food was the annual butchering of one or more hogs. This is a well-remembered event. It would start when Dad would use his old .22 caliber rifle to put a bullet between the eyes of some unsuspecting hog in the pigpen. Immediately thereafter, he would slit the hog’s throat to drain as much blood as possible. Then one of the horses would drag the hog over to the butchering area near the house; the horse never liked this assignment but, with much snorting and pawing, he would get it done. Using a rope and pulley attached to a tripod of three timbers, the hog was raised high enough to be slid into a large sloping barrel filled with boiling water. The carcass was sloshed around in this hot water in order to loosen the hair and bristles. It would then be removed from the barrel and remain hung from the tripod for scraping off the hair and removal of the entrails, better known as guts. The carcass was cut into sections (hams, ribs, chops and steaks) while it was hanging and which were then moved to a large temporary table erected nearby. Now the real work would begin.

Miscellaneous bits and pieces not appropriate for smoking and storage were cut into small chunks to be readied for hand grinding and the making of sausage. That grinding would continue well into the night and was tiring and boring with each of us taking turns. Mother would take the ground sausage, place it in crocks and bake it for several hours prior to storage in the basement. The hams were hung in the smokehouse and smoked with a hickory fire for several days. Various and sundry pieces of the fresh meat were cooked and eaten for several days after the butchering. In general, we were fed up with the smell, the grease and the aftereffects for several days thereafter. But the slices of smoked ham and baked sausage tasted very good in the frigid winter evenings that followed.

Another source of food was, of course, the cows. The sale of milk was one of our main sources of income from the beginning and Dad was continually upgrading the herd and improving the handling of the milk. So we had plenty of milk, cream and butter made from the cream when we did our own churning. We never drank the milk, but Mother used it extensively to make thickened milk, bread and milk, mush, oatmeal and the other necessities of life to a family that couldn’t spend much at the local grocery. While Dad carefully bred all the cows to a neighbor’s bull and we had many calves, we never killed a calf for food. He raised sheep for the income from wool and from the lambs. We did not eat sheep in any form in our home. He sold most of the calves and lambs to butchers in nearby towns.

So, as I remember it, we usually had plenty of food on the table. Mother baked bread and lots of it. I do recall many meals of thickened milk (milk and flour boiled together), cornmeal mush (in a bowl or fried), potato soup, bread and milk and some other variations. But Mother could make fried chicken, mashed potatoes, angel food cake and a variety of pies as well as anybody in the world so we fully enjoyed many meals. She also canned and canned and canned - tomatoes, apples, cherries, peaches, corn, pickles and many other fruits and vegetables. We had good producing orchards when the farm was bought, but they became less productive as time went by; Dad evidently did not have the desire to fight the bugs and diseases that molested them nor to replace the trees as they died.

My favorite snack from Mother’s kitchen was her bread and butter pickles. I have eaten sliced pickles in many forms since those days but have never tasted anything comparable to her pickles. My future bride, Helen, agreed with me fully the first time that she tasted them and even organized a small production effort with Jessie in order to have a little side income. They had no trouble selling all the jars that they made as soon as potential buyers tasted them. I will not attempt to describe the process in detail but would hope that someday one of our descendants will take that old recipe and try it. Roughly, it requires the slicing of cucumbers and onions, chilling that mixture with ice, adding syrup of many ingredients (vinegar, sugar, turmeric, cloves, celery seed and mustard seed), heating the mixture to near boiling point and sealing in sterilized jars. Our son, Dick has a copy of that recipe.

Water was no great problem although sometimes it was an undesirable chore to get the drinking and cooking water. That water came from a pump in a well about twenty-five feet deep in the front lawn. In the winter when the wind was blowing, there was never a volunteer to fill a bucket with that cold pump handle and carry it into the house. Water for washing and bathing was drawn from a cistern at the corner of the house near the kitchen, which was filled with rainwater from the roof. A small pump at the kitchen sink was used for drawing this water. Sometime in the late 1920’s, Dad discovered that a spring on the hillside about 300 yards from the house was high enough to permit water to flow by gravity into the cellar of the house. As a result, a concrete trough was built in the cellar and the water was piped to this trough. The flow was very small but dependable for drinking water and Mother finally had a cool spot in which she should place containers of milk, butter and other products. (There was no refrigerator.) Dad later built a small tile milk house between the house and the barn into which he extended the pipe from the spring to meet the requirement to keep the milk cool in five gallon cans until it was picked up by the milk truck. Somehow he acquired or built a rickety wooden wheelbarrow to be used in moving the milk cans to the road.

When I graduated from West Point in 1933, I had saved some money and talked my parents into using it to install a pressurized water system in the house. We installed an indoor toilet in one of the spare bedrooms and connected the system to the kitchen sink. Finally there was running water for all needs in the house and the old outhouse was torn down. I also bought and planted some evergreens around the house. The tall blue spruce in the front lawn is the sole survivor of that planting.

Working on the Farm

My clearest recollection of life on the farm during those years can be summed up in one word: WORK. My children laugh at me when I try to describe my unhappy memories of those days; now I’ll put it in writing so my grandchildren can also laugh unbelievingly. But I never had much to laugh about. There was always the cows - go get them in the early morning if they had strayed too far from the barn: help with the milking; kick the cows out of the barn and clean the stalls, no simple chore if they had remained there all night in the winter. In the evening, they had to be herded into the barn and milked again. I had, at most, two pairs of shoes, one of which was to be worn on Sunday. So, I smelled like a manure pile at times and probably carried some of that scent with me to school.

Jim was two years older than I and worked more in the stable and with the horses. Dad normally had three or four horses in the early years and was very proud of them most of the time. He was always on the lookout for ways of improving his teams either by trading or purchase. Those horses were absolutely essential to farming in those days as were the many items of farm equipment to be pulled by them - plows, harrows, sleds, wagons, tedder, manure spreader, binder and hay rake. Generally, the horses were well trained and could be handled by almost anyone, but about once each year, they would become frisky or frightened while working and runaways similar to those sometimes seen in the movies would occur. I was never involved in one of those, but Dad and Jim were lucky to come out of some of them without major injury. Several years after I left home for West Point and the Army, Dad acquired an old tractor and the use of horses decreased.

Most of the farm work pertained to the growing and harvesting of crops - corn, wheat, oats and hay - to feed the livestock. Each type of crop required an entirely different type of work and equipment. First, there was the corn. I believe I name that crop first because in my memory, I disliked it the most. I didn’t have that much to do with the plowing and harrowing in preparation for the planting other than picking off the rocks and the roots. But, I do remember the hoeing of the rows until the stalks were high enough to be unaffected by the weeds - and the cutting and shocking after the corn was ripe, followed by the husking and hauling in the fall. Hoeing sounds like a simple chore, but it is rather boring and tiring to spend a day walking long rows of corn with your head down, hacking at weeds and uncovering the sprouts that had been covered by the corn plow drawn between the rows by the horse. In 1930, after I left the farm to go to West Point, Dad had a silo erected and from then on, most of the corn was planted for silage so there was much less hoeing and husking.

The other two-grain crops - wheat and oats - were planted every year, but those crops did not involve much manual work until the fields were ripe. Then came the cutting and tying into sheaves. The binder drawn by horses did most of this, but there were always areas that could not be reached by binder; those areas were cleared with a grain scythe swung by hand after which the grain was raked and tied into sheaves by hand. The sheaves were then gathered and stacked into shocks of seven or eight to ripen further in preparation for threshing. This was not hard work but boring and not too pleasant under a hot sun with dirt and remnants gathering under your clothing.

Threshing was a memorable occasion with the big steam tractor pulling the threshing machine up to the selected flat area of ground on a scheduled date. A local entrepreneur who made his living by renting the equipment to the various farmers owned this machinery; frequently, his payment consisted of a share of the grain resulting from the threshing. Each threshing would take about one day at each farm and required the sharing of work by several neighbors. On that day, wagonloads of the stacked grain would be hauled successively to the machine where each sheaf would be pitched in a time sequence to the platform of the thresher. At that point, one man would quickly cut the binding on the sheaf with a sharp knife and another would feed the loose straw into the machine" Out would pour the grain at the bottom of the thresher, where it was sacked and hauled to the grain house by horse and wagon. At the end of the thresher, the straw would feed out over a conveyor belt to be moved by pitchfork in the hands of three or four men to form a well-shaped stack of straw at the end of the threshing. In all, the manual effort of about twenty men was required simultaneously for each threshing. The work was hard but somewhat exciting. As I remember it, the most tiring work was the loading of the wagons in the field and the pitching of the straw on the stack.

The best part of each threshing was the meal.