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Freeland area men and women in the Military
What's on this page:
- Freeland & Vicinity Honor Roll - Contributed by Charlie Gallagher
- Sts. Peter & Paul's Eastern Greek Catholic Church WWII memorial
- Jeddo World War II Honor Roll
- MMI Memorial dedication, 1947
- Public Park Veterans Memorial - IDs of 2 women in photos
added
- Coxe Memorial, Freeland Cemetery
- 109th Field Artillery, Third Penna. Field Artillery,
1879-1917
- World War
II Men & Women from Freeland PA - Contributed by Billy Kuklis
(off site)
- Freeland Veterans page
- Bert McNamee (off site)
- Freeland Drum & Bugle Corps
- Upper Lehigh Honor
Roll
- WWI Memorial Grove at Freeland High School
- Memorial Day offerings
- Florence Zierdt
A few words about the scrapbook link contributed by Billy Kuklis: "Some info about the scrapbook - it was assembled by my Dad (William Kuklis Sr.) and my Aunt Catherine Kuklis Shelhamer during World War II. It has newspaper articles and stories about many service men and women from Freeland and surrounding areas. It also has some interesting info about the atom bomb and the death of President Roosevelt."
This
is the "Honor Roll" memorial that used to stand
on Centre street next to the Borough Building, where the firehouse was
built in the mid-1950s. Charlie Gallagher sent this. Sadly, the
names
aren't readable in the photo. If you know of someone who has a clearer
photo, will you let me know? I would love to post it here. However, I'm
delighted to share this photo from Charlie. On the bottom center of the
memorial it says, "They served that this nation might live."There are four "Honor Roll" plaques at the top, which I assume are for the different branches of the military. The "V" at the top under the American Legion emblem is outlined in neon, and there are neon tubes around the perimeter of the piece; it looks like there were three different color neon tubes around the perimeter of each tablet (red, white and blue).
Some of you will also remember the smaller Honor Roll memorial that used to stand in the center of Upper Lehigh, and I wish I knew what happened to it, and I wish we had a photograph of it to post here.
This memorial to parishioners who died in World War II stands on the site of Sts. Peter & Paul's Eastern Greek Catholic Church.
Four names are listed: Nicholas Miscishin, Thomas Horwath, John Kapushynsky, Stephen Kapushynsky.
Jeddo World War II Honor Roll - photographed with Carol Jones in September 2017.
MMI Memorial Dedication for World War II
grads who died in service - The
men being commemorated at this Memorial
Dedication on June 14, 1947 at MMI were James F. Confair, Joseph
Evancho, William R. Gallagher, Jr., Charles D. Harris, George T.
Kushner, Jr., Eugene J. Muffler, and Bruno S. Procopio ... "who gave
their Lives for their Country." Bronze memorials were supplied courtesy
of George Kobelka.This dedication ceremony program was kindly lent to Tom Landers for me to be able to scan a copy during a visit to Freeland in August 2008. I don't know who lent it for that purpose. I scanned all of the material that he had collected from Freeland area people who were willing to let me copy their items, and then I returned all to Tom, except for a few items that the persons involved had explicitly said I could keep. I'm grateful to all of those people who shared their historical items with me that way, and to Tom for being willing to gather the material and then return it to the owners.
Public Park
Veterans Memorial - These two photos came from Bob
Celantano. One shows George Kobelka at the ceremony. I don't have the
names of the two women in the other photo (if you know, please tell me
and I'll update this information) - is the sailor Jim DiPronio? I don't
have a date for this, guessing late 1960s. More recently, Laura Kushner wrote: Hello! Thank you for all the time and effort you have put into this website! My dad, Edward Kushner, grew up in Freeland in the 1930's & 1940's. He served in the Navy in WWII. His brother George T. Kushner, Jr. also served in WWII and was killed March 18,1945. The women in the Public Park Veterans Memorial photo are on the left my grandmother, Mrs.George Kushner and on the right is Mrs. George Kochie. Last year my family discovered about 50 letters my Uncle George and Dad wrote during WWII. They are incredible and truly capture a piece of history. I am currently putting together a book of all the letters and gathering information about their lives during that time. I am hoping to find more information about my Uncle George, especially pictures of him. It has been a blessing getting to "know" him through the letters he wrote. Thanks again for this website and please feel free to contact me with any questions you may have.
*** If you have any information or photos relating to George T. Kushner, Jr. to share with Laura, please let me know. Thanks to Laura for her contribution to our information about these photos.
Coxe Memorial at the Freeland Cemetery - photos by Charlie Gallagher. Information about this memorial will be added at another time. Meanwhile I just want to add that I remember marching in the Memorial Day parades as a Girl Scout, and the way the parade route ended at the Freeland Cemetery where a commemorative ceremony was held.
109th Field Artillery, 53rd Artillery
Brigade, 28th Division, Armies of the United States - This
was shared by Larry Maso, who wrote: "It
is from my wife's uncle Michael Gordon of Hazleton in the National
Guard. I believe he was gassed in France and also developed black lung
in the mines and still lived to be 79. Some of it was in bad shape but
I was able to digitize the whole thing." The full title is: A Short
History and Illustrated Roster of the 109th Field Artillery, 53rd
Artillery Brigade, 28th Division, Armies of the United States, Colonel
Asher Miner, Commanding Officer. Headquarters Home Station,
Wilkes-Barre, Penna. 1879-1917. Larry has given us a PDF of this
extensive listing with photos of all of the men who served in this
division. Thank you, Larry.Clicking the links below will open the Adobe PDF file. If you don't have Adobe Reader on your computer you can download it for free at www.adobe.com.
109th Field Artillery history 1879-1917 - (PDF file
size = 23.1 MB)
About this page: Many Freelanders have served our country through military service. I will add information to this page as I acquire it. At present this website doesn't have a Military section, and I can't add one without having to redo the sidebar by hand on every page in the site. When I migrate these pages to a different web platform in a year or two I won't have that problem, and at that point I'll add an actual Military section. For now, this page is linked from the People section.