Story behind the story (1/21/04)

Sometimes there’s a story behind the story.

That’s the case when it comes to Louis J. Bruner.

By now, most local folks have heard of Bruner, whose exploits in the Civil War brought him a Medal of Honor.

They know that he was born in Monroe County, that he was a hero in the Battle of Walker’s Ford in 1863, that he settled in Portland in the second half of his life, and that he’s buried in Green Park Cemetery.

A ceremony placing a Medal of Honor marker at his grave was conducted in 1997 with much appropriate fanfare.

The story behind the story is how Bruner’s life and heroism came to light after years when he was forgotten.

No one growing up in Jay County in the period from the 1920s to the 1980s heard Bruner’s name in Indiana history classes. There were no memorials to him or speeches in his honor. He was the hero no one knew about.

But a guy named John Schmitt changed all that.

John grew up in southern Indiana and became a lawyer. He also developed some bad habits that led to the end of his practicing law.

Re-building his life after a crash-and-burn period in his career, he went back to Indiana University to get a master’s degree in journalism.

That’s where he was when he stumbled across an old book of Civil War stories and learned to his surprise that a Monroe County native — Bruner — had won the Medal of Honor.

The more he read about Bruner’s exploits the more fascinated he became, particularly because Bruner not only put himself at dire risk once during his ride to alert Union troops trapped behind Confederate lines but also put his life on the line again to get the troops to safety.

But what irked John was that there was no recognition of any of this in Bruner’s Monroe County.

So he did what any journalism student would do; he wrote a story about it. The piece, published in the Indiana Daily Student, probably would have been the end of things. It prompted no surge of interest in recognizing a forgotten Civil War hero.

But the story didn’t stop there. Because his research told him that Bruner was buried in Green Park, he thought of acquaintances in Jay County. John had known Bob Clamme’s sister and had met Bob and Rosie on more than one occasion.

So he dropped a copy of the Daily Student article in the mail.

That’s how it ended up on my desk, and a version of the story made its way into print in The CR. John’s piece was later reprinted in one of our Veterans Day supplements.

As a result, Louis Bruner’s name was well-known locally when the Medal of Honor Society set about recognizing him in the late 1990s.

John Schmitt, meanwhile, has gone on to have a career both in journalism and in teaching. We’ve maintained a long-distance friendship via e-mail and the occasional phone call and share an interest in free press development work abroad.

At the moment, he’s teaching journalism at a university in Texas. He received national recognition in the past year for his efforts on behalf of the free press rights of student newspapers, efforts which have him looking for another job.

And he still remembers Louis J. Bruner fondly.

When I e-mailed him last week about the Bruner letter which the Jay County Historical Society had acquired, John was delighted, still marveling at the heroism displayed that day in December of 1863 at Walker’s Ford.[[In-content Ad]]