Faded photo holds many memories

The clipping was brittle and yellowed.
It had been protected with care in an old family album.
But 72 — nearly 73 — years had begun to take their toll on the old piece of newsprint.
Seventy-three years ago Sunday, America was plunged into World War II with the surprise attack by Japanese forces on the U.S. base at Pearl Harbor in Hawaii. And with that attack, the world would never be the same again for millions of Americans.
Pearl Harbor was very much on the mind of John Charles Holly last week when he brought the faded newspaper clipping by the office for me to see.
Still steady on his feet but with a younger relative at his elbow just in case, John Charles Holly was among the first Jay County residents to volunteer for duty in the wake of the Pearl Harbor attack. He now lives just south of the Jay-Randolph line in Randolph County, but back in December of 1941 he was very much a “Jay County boy.”
And the clipping attests to his service.
A fragment of the front page of The Portland Sun (a newspaper which lives on as The Dunkirk News and Sun), the clipping dates from mid-January, 1942, about six weeks after Pearl Harbor.
The headline: “Jay County Boys Are Full Fledged Soldiers.”
It’s accompanied by a photograph of Company A-2 under drill instructor “Cpl. Brown” at Fort Benjamin Harrison in Indianapolis.
“Jay County boys who left for military service have been in uniform for several days and have the appearance of real soldiers, as the above picture, made at Fort Harrison, indicates. They will later be permanently assigned to other cantonments,” says a caption under the photo.
Unfortunately, though the names of the young men in the photo are listed, the names aren’t in the right order to make proper identification.
John Charles Holly can pick himself out. He’s the second guy from the right in the front row. But matching the names of the others to the faces in the fading photograph is out of reach.
He has no idea if any of the others are still alive. He looked for them at the Jay County Fourth of July parade when World War II veterans were accorded special honor, but he couldn’t find a soul.
Still, he said, it’s important that the names be known.
Perhaps there are children or grandchildren or great-grandchildren out there who will recognize a name or a face.
It’s important, said John Charles Holly, that they know their forebears stepped up in a moment of national crisis.
At his request then, here are the names of the first Jay County recruits that winter long ago: William Henry Journey, James Harding Harmon, William Dudley Schwartz, Earl Gordon Simmons, Robert Stephen, John Leslie Bird, Frank Gaunt, Robert Woodrow Wehrly, Kenneth Earl Pfeifer, Orville Louis Rhodes, Harold Jeter Welsch, Merle LeRoy Bosworth, Joseph Paul Walters, Richard Perry Briner, George Frederick Theurer, William Peter Knote and Orrin Herbert Sipe.
And, of course, John Charles Holly, who has safely tucked the yellowed clipping back into the family album to be saved for future generations.