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Highway 36 Treasure Hunt

            The Highway 36 Treasure Hunt will be September 15, 16 and 17, 2022 and since we had such great success with the garage sale we are going to do it again!!! We will be open but instead of genealogy we will be selling our junk for you to treasure! Early Birds we have you covered. We will be open on Thursday September 15 from 8 to 4; we are going to be open on September 16 from 8 to 5 and September 17 from 8 to at 2.

                With all that being said do you have some more “junk” you would like to donate?? No clothing but we will take anything else to raise money to keep the library operational!

Monument in Hiawatha Cemetery

By: Penny Milroy, Librarian

The Brown County Genealogical Society

            A monument stands in back of the Hiawatha Cemetery that is in memory of veterans whose bodies lay in unknown graves or were lost and never recovered due to enemy action.

            The original dedication of this memorial was in 1953 on Memorial Day. The stone was installed by the veterans of Hiawatha and paid for by donations collected from local Hiawatha businesses. The dedication ceremony was started by the playing of the Military March by the Hiawatha High School band. It was attended by a majority of the community. The original thought was for the monument to only cover Hiawatha area veterans but during planning the Hiawatha American Legion Post changed this to a list of deceased veterans from all of Brown County.

            The original list of veterans were: H.J. Dandliker, Jr., Leroy Hazlett, Howard L. Walters, Edward Wolfe, Clyde M. Roush, Emerson Cyphers, Roy Wayne Davis, Kermit Fahrmeyer, Jeri H. Lange, Thomas G. Jelly and Ross E. Torkelson; of the original 14 veterans inscribed on the memorial stone 13 lost their lives during WWII and one in Korea.

            The monument reads: They sought no glory but their country’s good. In memory of those who made the supreme sacrifice in defense of their country graves unknown we honor.

            The memorial stood all but forgotten, until Jay Brock and Sam Schuetz decided the Hiawatha Cemetery needed a 35 foot flag pole with the site right by the existing memorial; also during the memorial service for Rex Parcels Sr., WWII veteran, the honor guard noticed the stone for his son Rex Parcels, Jr., missing in action.

            Rex, Jr. was serving as a pilot off an aircraft carrier when his plane went down and was never recovered. The Hiawatha American post became aware of another Brown County sailor who had lost his life during war and his body had never been recovered. Ensign Ivan Schug of Fairview graduated from Fairview High School in 1940. He was 21 when killed in the line of duty of Sunday, June 25, 1944. He was a pilot of the USS Yorktown stationed southeast of Iwo Jima in the pacific. His plane was seen going down and it was reported that he got out of the Grumman hellcat but was not recovered.

            The two events led to the Rededication of the original monument on May 28, 2016; 63 years after the original dedication.

            Over the last few years 3 more names have been discovered for listing on the “Lost But Not Found” monument. They are: Staff Sergeant Russell H. Trant from the Everest area was lost when the HMS Rohna was sunk on November 26, 1943; 1,015 American troops perished in that incident. The government kept this disaster secret until the 1990’s when the few survivors demanded that those who lost their lives be recognized. The second soldier was Willard L. Winsor who was a prisoner of war. He was captured during the naval

battle of Leyte Gulf near the Philippine Islands. He was being transported on a Japanese vessel carrying 1,781 United States prisoners that was sunk by a United States submarine only nine survived. The third is James E. McClaskey of Horton, Kansas. He lost his life on February 28, 1942 in the Naval Battle of the Java Sea. He was just 20 years old and the first young man from Horton to lose his life during WWII. The family installed a stone at the Powhattan Cemetery just feet from a stone for Clyde M. Roush who was one of the original 14 listed on the monument.