This letter provided me with a nice puzzle piece to discover. On the second page of the letter, my grandmother mentions the Myers twins. How many identical twins named Myers can there have been in Kentland in 1942? Who also enlisted in the air cadets? Luckily, there was only one set, Keith and Kenneth Myers. They were the sons of Alba and Mary Myers. Alba Myers was another of the town’s pharmacists. I could not find the longer article that my grandmother mentioned being in the Chicago paper. I did however find this shorter piece that was run in the Tipton Tribune.
Postcard of St. Joseph’s Church, Kentland, Indiana (CardCow.com)
I was able to track down Keith and Kenneth’s burials in Kentland at the St. Josephs Cemetery. Kentland has a small Catholic Parish church, located on Allen Street in the southeast corner of town. The cemetery is located further south of town on W 1700 S road. As far as I can tell, Kentland has two cemeteries, St. Josephs and Fairlawn. The Catholics are buried at St. Josephs and everyone else is buried at Fairlawn. The two cemeteries are actually located right next to each other on the same road. The Find A Grave record for Keith indicates that he died in 1949 and he was a lieutenant. Kenneth survived his twin for many years, dying in 1979.
Other people mentioned in the letter were Dorothy Krull and her mother. Dorothy’s mother was visiting Kentland for the week. She brought Nancy with her. My first guess is that Nancy might have been Dorothy’s sister, perhaps a niece. Since I don’t know Mrs. Jackson’s given name, I have not been able to track down the rest of Dorothy’s family yet. We will get there!
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- August 21, 1942 Envelope
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- August 21, 1942, p. 1
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- August 21, 1942, p. 2
Letter transcription:
Aug. 21-1942
Dear Daddy-
We are getting ready to go to Lafayette this afternoon. I didn’t make an appointment but think I will be able to get in if I go and wait. We were going tomorrow but Thelma called this morning and said she couldn’t come until tomorrow and I want to be here while she is working. Mark is just getting up but we were up late last night and I wanted him to get his rest. Dorothy & her mother came out yesterday to get some flowers and she took us home with her and we had supper there. Nick took the children to the show and Dorothy, her mother & I stayed home. Mrs. Jackson and Nancy are visiting here this week. Mrs. J. is going to Lafayette with us and Lucile Johnson. The Krull children and Nancy won’t be interested because they have the pony to ride and that will keep them home. I think they rode “Bay” all afternoon yesterday. Nick & Dorothy said she would probably be worn out by night.
It is getting warm again. We haven’t had any rain now for some time, so maybe we will have some “August” weather yet this month.
(page 2) The Myers twins enlisted as air cadets. They got quite a write up in the papers. Their picture being sworn in was in the Chi paper. They are identical and weigh the same, same height, same blood pressure & pulse. The only difference the examining officer could find was one had a molar out. Pat Mullen tried to enlist but couldn’t pass the physical.
John rec’d a card from Grandpa Y. for his birthday. He will get to spend his birthday money this afternoon. I will probably have to wait a while to see the Dr. this afternoon so I am going to have Dorothy & Lucile take the boys back to town and shop. That is the only drawback to Dr. C. office being so far out. It doesn’t seem to bother people much because he is so busy all the time.
The Zells will soon be moving in so we will have a new addition to the “gang”. Mark protests that he won’t walk to school with “those girls”, but I think when the time comes he will be ready to go along. The man who has been principal at Ade will be our new grade school principal.
It is nearly noon and we want to leave by 1 P.M. so must get our lunch and get ready.
Love Mother
Very cool story!
Thank you! Hopefully someday I can find the full article in the Chicago paper.
I have not had good luck finding things in the paper in Chicago for some reason, but I wish you luck!
I agree with you. I usually don’t have much luck finding Chicago papers. Between my Ancestry and Newspaper Archive subscriptions all I found was the Tipton Tribune article.
That’s a shame.
“The Find A Grave record for Keith indicates that he died in 1949 and he was a lieutenant. Kenneth survived his twin for many years, dying in 1979.” Heartbreaking! It’s hard to imagine one going on without the other. It’s one of my worst nightmares as a parent of ID twins.
I can totally see that. It always seems more heartbreaking when twins are involved vs. traditional siblings.
When I was in seminary, one of my friends was a twin, whose brother had died at childbirth. He said that was quite a burden growing up. I don’t remember the Myers twins, but by the time I was old enough to be aware, one had died–and they were so much older than I was one.
I remember St. Joseph’s church–I was in there at least once when I was growing up. There was quite a cultural divide in town, which I suppose was symbolized by the separate cemeteries you mention. There were three Protestant congregations in town, and the Catholic Church. Of course, people got along–as I recall the Kennys and the Funks were Catholic. It was one of those things that you just didn’t talk about if you didn’t have to.
But things could get pretty traumatic if a Protestant fell in love with a Catholic; interfaith marriage was discouraged. Protestants hated that dreaded promise that the children had to be raised Catholic. And I do recall once that, when a Catholic-Protestant wedding was about happen at St. Joseph’s Church, one of the Protestant relatives declared firmly that she would not enter “that heathen temple”! The Protestant churches in town were pretty austere, but the Catholic Church had saints, statutes, Stations of the Cross…all of which the Protestants–including my mother–disdained. And I do remember the priest at St. Joseph’s, Father Fallon, who was always so dour.
When I was growing up the Zells had “always lived there’–so it’s interesting that they moved in just before I was born….speaking of which, it’s now just a little more than a month away
Strange, Keith’s record say date of birth unknown, but Kenneth’s is listed as Aug 14, 1924.
That is just because of how the graveyard/gravestone was transcribed to the database. I have sent in a correction to the person who entered the data.