Never Forgotten: The Stories of Licking County Veterans

In 2014, the Licking County Library began compiling information
on county veterans for their "In the Company of Heroes" project.
The more we learned the more we realized that veterans who have
lived in the community had done amazing forgotten deeds. In
2016 the library began a weekly column in the Newark Advocate to
highlight our veterans. This present compilation contains fifty-one
of those articles with additional editing and pictures. The letters,
correspondence, and quotes included retain their original spellings,
terms and slang. In some instances, clarifications of terms are
included in for the reader's understanding.
The decision about which stories to include in this volume was not an
easy one to make. We determined to include veterans who spanned
our county's existence, and include the diversity of the men and
women and the branches of the armed services in which they served.
These accounts were not written to explain wars or battles. They are
meant to tell the veterans story: where they were and what they did.
These veterans walked the streets of Licking County. They saw our
rivers, creeks, mounds, hills, courthouse, towns and villages. They
rest in our local cemeteries or in National Cemeteries in the United
States, the Philippines and Europe. Some are still missing in action.
Some spent time as prisoners of the Confederates, the Germans,
the Japanese and the North Koreans. They were laborers, lawyers,
nurses, farriers, missionaries and teachers. Men, women, white, black,
immigrants, children of immigrants they all lived here and helped
build our County.
There is a saying that people die twice—once when their earthly body
dies and the second time when there is no one left to remember their
name. May we never let any of our veterans of Licking County be
forgotten and die the second death.