Connellsville will honor war dead
Thanks to Judy Keller, I can now put a face to a name. Years ago, I wrote about Bobby Burns. His story was told to me by Rita Smyth for a magazine article I was doing about the Connellsville Canteen of World War II.
Bobby was just a kid when Rita knew him. Only a few months out of high school, Bobby would be killed in the fighting in Italy during the war. For Rita, who was in her twenties at the time, Bobby’s death hit home.
From Rita, I knew where Bobby Burns had lived. The family’s corner home on Connellsville’s Johnson Avenue is still standing. I knew about his youthful jobs, and about his farewell from Connellsville at the old train station.
But I never knew what he looked like. Until recently. There’s a photograph of Bobby in Keller’s meticulously researched book, “Respect, Honor, Remember: Connellsville Area Veterans Who Made the Supreme Sacrifice in WWII.”
For the book, Keller (alert: she’s a cousin of mine) digs deep into the lives of the Connellsville area men who gave their lives in the struggle against Nazi Germany and the Japanese war machine between 1941 and 1945. She also has put out a second book, this one devoted to the Connellsville area dead of Korea, Vietnam, and the Middle East.
Over lunch the other day, Keller told me the work has been a labor of love. Now retired, she taught American history at Connellsville Area High School. “I told my students,” she said, “‘You can’t know where you’re going if you don’t know where you’ve been.'”
The daughter of a World War II veteran, the late Herbie Wrote, Judy wants everyone to swell with the same pride of country she feels every Memorial Day.
The past year or so has been a tremendously busy time for her. In conjunction with the books, she has been helping to spearhead the expansion of the Connellsville war memorial located a little ways beyond the city’s Memorial Bridge heading north on Route 119.
By spring, the eight-member committee she formed hopes to have in place four granite slabs chiseled with the 250 names of Connellsville area war dead going back to the time the town was incorporated in 1806.
The finished project will cost in the neighborhood of $80,000. That kind of cash doesn’t grow on trees. To get to that level, persistence and creativity are required.
The same can be said of Keller’s efforts to collect the names of the dead and, further, to document their lives.
In service to both the books and tablets, Keller has tracked down some astonishing particulars, such as the fact that a Connellsville man, David Cummings Jr., was killed at the Alamo; and that two Connellsville men – William H. Harvey and James Cooley – died on the first day of the Civil War’s Battle of Gettysburg, while a third man – William Whaley – was wounded and died later in July 1863.
As for more recent history, it’s sad but true that Victor Peterson, who had been on his high school’s undefeated swim team, died on the beaches of Normandy, France, on June 6, 1944; and that David Bartock was the first Marine from Connellsville to die in Vietnam. Keller discovered that before even graduating from Connellsville High School in 1966, Bartock had enlisted in the Marine Corps. He was a 19-year-old Marine rifleman when he was killed near Quang Ngai Province in March 1967.
The day Bartock died was the same day William Anderson of Connellsville learned that he was headed to Vietnam. He would die there in October. Wounded and pinned down by enemy fire, he continued to lob hand grenades at the foe. “He refused medical treatment,” Keller writes. “For his bravery he was awarded the Bronze Star Medal with V for Valor.”
I was well aware of Shelby Feniello, both because his mother’s maiden name is Robbins (not a relative) and because, as a reporter, I covered his 2006 funeral service and burial.
What I didn’t know, or maybe I didn’t remember, was that Feniello who was killed near the Iraqi border with Syria during the second Gulf War, was on his second tour of duty in the war zone.
Back to Bobby Burns: His photo shows a good-looking young man with dark, wavy hair. He had been vice president of his high school class, and “he loved to dance and sing,” Keller writes.
For purchase information about the books, email Judy at kellerja@zoominternet.net. And stand by for spring, when the granite tablets are scheduled to go up.
Richard Robbins lives in Uniontown. He can be reached at dick.l.robbins@gmail.com.