American Legacies Organization, Inc.

In the 30s young men and women courted by seeing each other in church, or attending a church singing, or it might be dinner on the ground after a revival, but always in public, never going somewhere alone. Young men living in the country had to walk everywhere, their family’s mule had to rest so as to be strong for plowing the next day.

Ruth Stauffer was born in 1922, in a small farm town outside of Zurich Switzerland. She has known her husband Ed, since she was two years old she met him at her neighbors house. They married after Ed finished college, and some time later - in 1954, they moved to the United States.

We landed in Papua New Guinea on August 16th, and I got my first glimpse of the jungle, and jungle life. The natives there were, in our Western eyes, uncivilized. These people looked exactly like exotic pictures that I had seen when in school. They wore very few clothes and always carried bamboo knives. The jungle was thick like pea soup and hilly, and there was grass that grew eight feet tall!

This is the Army

As I listened to some of the stories this gentle man was telling, I decided to ask him if he would mind giving me a private audience, so I could write down some of his stories and pass them along to others. This is the story of that mild mannered gentleman named Cliff W. Olson.

From the time I was an 8-year-old tad in 1933 living with an aunt - my moms sister - in University City, Mo., - to 1965 when I was 40 and living here in Moreno Valley, Ca., I always wanted to be some kind of writer... Its really not a long story, well not THAT long of a story.

By: Kathy Warnes

Charles and Anne Wedel of Wisconsin began their forty-six year marriage on a nautical note and were still cruising full speed ahead.

In the spring, 1942, the Navy sent Charles, who originally hailed from New York City, to Great Lakes Naval Training station for training. He met Anne, a Milwaukee native, at a dance at the Milwaukee Yacht Club. They were married in August 1942 and he was shipped out three days later.

Once a year, and oh, how I wish it were more often, the gathering of the Straessle clan occurs at this place called ‘peace’. We laugh, share stories, heartaches, struggles, child-raising experiences, and without fail, peace. All of us know the smell of the cypress siding, the old well house, the pines and the oaks. The aroma that fills the air also fills our hearts. We all have different experiences of the same peace.

McDermott, newly married and barely out of his first year of accelerated surgical residency training, found himself shipping out overseas even earlier than expected, a 25-year-old surgeon assigned to an anti-aircraft mobile battalion. McDermott’s family and new wife watched from the lawn of their summer house on Marblehead Neck as his ship glided slowly out of Boston Harbor for an unknown destination.

MOUT Training, Ft. Devens, MA, 1973

Taken From Just a Few Lines: The Memoirs of Keith L. Winchenbach

By Keith L. Winchenbach was born in Rockland, Maine on July 13, 1923

Submitted by Jessica Winchenbach from handwritten notes from her grandfather, Keith L. Winchenbach. All chapters have been edited and proofed by Jessica Winchenbach.