Off The Editor’s Desk – 6-6-2018

Looking back at 1944!

I enjoy going into our library and looking at copies of our newspapers that were printed many years ago. All local newspapers are a historical record of the community that they serve. I have had the bound file of volume 55 of the Glenwood City Tribune on one of my desks for some time.

That volume contains our weekly newspapers printed from September 1943 to September 1944 and holds many stories of people serving in World War II. It has several stories about Ellen G. Ainsworth, of Glenwood City, a Second Lieutenant, serving as an Army nurse who was the only woman from Wisconsin to die as the results of hostile action in World War II.

She died on February 16, 1944 after being hit during a Germany bombardment of the hospital site, near Anzio, Italy, where she was caring for injured servicemen.

Also in those old newspaper are letters sent home by service people and were reprinted. One from Ainsworth was received as a Christmas poem in 1943. It read as follows:

“My home is a tent,

I sleep on a cot,

You have snow

But we have not.

This note brings greetings,

From far to near.

To all those beings

That I hold dear.

Season’s greetings through the year.

And, contrary to custom,

I’m glad you’re not here.”

Also in the January 17, 1944 issue of the Tribune is a story about Joseph R. Wheeler, who at 96 was the oldest reader of the Tribune and lived with his daughter in Hempstead, NY. Wheeler came to Glenwood when it was a lumbering boomtown, where along with his brothers were engaged in the lumbering business and operated a chain of hotels.

The Wheeler Hotel in Glenwood was on the corner of Pine and Second street where the city parking lot is now located.

Local people called Wheeler “Uncle Joe”. He came to Wisconsin in 1861 from Canada and settled with his parents at Menasha. In the early days he was an active Republican and served as a leader of that party in county and state politics and served as Sheriff of St. Croix County.

In his renewal letter of 1944, Wheeler writes: “I was 96 last May and I am feeling fine, eat well and sleep like a top. I have trouble hearing, but outside of that I am OK and expect to vote for a Republican President in November.”

However, Joe passed away in July of 1944 and his obituary told that as a young lad he joined the Union Army and served in the Civil War, at first as a drummer boy. He fought at the battle of Gettysburg and in 1938 he was one of the veterans who returned to Gettysburg as guests of the government to observe the 75th anniversary of the battle.

Thanks for reading! ~Carlton