'Tuesday, 9\[pvember 23, 1993 Section ef tlie Salem 'l\&ws

• ile en 1neers a nee ith atton XII Corps fought in Europe during W or Id War II years

By Lois Firestone

I T WAS A STUNNING find. And unexpected. Not

65 miles from the Czech bor­der, the engineers of the XII Corps uncovered, hidden away in the interior of the Merkers salt mine, the entire gold reserves of the German Reichsbank.

More than 100 tons of gold bars, silver and paper currency were secreted, along with boxes of rare objets d'art and stacks of priceless paintings filched from private homes and museums throughout Europe.

By April 6, 1945, the day the cache was discovered, the corps, the 613 Engineers Light Equipment Company under General George Patton's Third Army, had advanced across France and Germany in the final days of World War II -in the last month, they'd advance 215 miles, capturing 67,000 prisoners as they went.

These mobile engineers were sent out from one job to another, their graders working roads and bridge approaches and their shovels driving piling on bridges while cranes put bridge sections in place. In all, they helped build 770 bridges over rivers they'd only read about in their high school his­tory books: the Seine, Mame, Meuse, Main and Rhine. In the winter months, the grader operators went on ice patrol and cleared roads and fields of snowdrifts.

Like most of the Gfs fighting the war, 1st Sgt. Don Schnor­renberg was young - 23 -when he was drafted and had never seen much of the world outside Youngstown where he was born and Salem where he grew up, worked and married.

Harry Schnorrenberg had died in 1926 when Don was eight years old and his mother, Hazel Paxson Schnorrenberg moved with Don and his two brothers, Kenneth and Keith to her parents' home along the Damascus Road.

After Don graduated from Salem High in 1936 he went to work as a molder at the Quaker

Foundry. He met Betty Rogers when the two took part in the First Christian Church's youth activities, and they were mar­ried in 1940. Gary was 4 months old when Don left for Camp White, Oregon.

The XII Corps would serve in 5 European campaigns: Nor­mandy, Northern France, Rhineland, Ardennes and Cen­tral Europe and received a mer­itorious service ribbon from General Patton. They also had the distinction of dumping Pat­ton into a ditch - the grader operator didn't see him com­ing, Patton tried to pass and got pushed into a culvert.

Back in Salem Betty was clerking at McCulloch's, although she later left to work for her father, Fred Rogers who ran the local A & P store for years. R. S. McCulloch Sr. was sympathetic when she wanted to visit Don in Philadelphia before he went overseas and offered to give her the money for the trip.

It took eight LSTs to haul the corps' equipment for the Utah Beach landing on July 27, 1944 during the Normandy invasion - usually one LST cargoed four tanks. Basic traveling equipment was an 8-ton Cor­bett truck pulling a D8 angled bulldozer atop a flatbed trailer with a pan scoop hooked behind - everywhere they went they took at_ least 45 tons of equipment, the truck­mounted cranes, shovels, three different welding outfits, grad­ers, air compressors and earth augers. Sometimes they found discarded German equipment which they repaired and used, like a crusher the corps used for months.

As the Third fought across Europe the light engineers demolished shell-torn buildings and spread the rubble along muddied roads and removed enemy roadblocks in advance of cavalry and infantry units.

Less than a week after they discovered the gold reserves, the corps moved into Meining­en and captured German files of the names of all prisoners

1st Sgt. Don Schnorrenberg stands with a Luxenbourg family on their farm in Holzem during World Warn (above) and (below) Schnorrenberg at the site of a steel mill in Belleville, France on November 1944.

they'd taken during the war. A few weeks later after they took over Asch, the first large Czech town entered by American troops, they found a huge dump containing over 2 million poison gas shells.

At one point in the corps comparatively short-lived exis­tence, the entire company was surrounded by the enemy -they "laid low," Don remem­bers, until "a ration truck driv­er "rescued us; he had a machine gun mounted on the truck and broke through. It was on Easter Sunday."

Another time, five men were isolated from their company, waiting for the chance to get back to camp. They'd gone sev­eral days without food when they saw a field of turnips. "One of the guys went to get some when a police dog came after him," Don recalls. "The driver tried to escape and backed the jeep, bashed into some church steps, pulled out and ran right into a tank driven by a few diehard Germans. One soldier jumped over a fence and was shot. The Ger­mans made the Gis carry the wounded man. They all stayed

See Engineers, page 8

People ask, By "Niike Cochran Associated Press DEATH AS IN LIFE,

Connally could not escape the echoes of gunfire 30 years ago in Dealey Plaza.

As the former Texas gover­nor lay in state in Austin this summer, researchers were demanding bullet fragments from his body. They insisted tests would prove President John F. Kennedy's slaying was the result of a conspiracy.

"It's an appalling attempt to capitalize on Governor Connal­ly's death to gain publicity for worn-out theories," said Julian Read, a Connally confidant.

The attempt failed. The frag­ments from the horror of November 1963 were buried with Connally. But the theories were not.

Indeed, they have never been more pronounced than today, as a generation of Americans born after the assassination reaches adulthood.

It is almost as if the trauma of Kennedy's death and the memory of his Camelot cannot compete with the clamor about conspiracy.

The question these three decades later, it seems, is not "Who was JFK?"

It is "Who killed JFK?"

The sky was overcast that Friday morning, but the autumn sun melted away the chill and the cloud cover as Air Force One made the short hop from Fort Worth to Dallas Love Field.

It was Nov. 22, 1963.

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killed JFK?' At the urging of local politi­

cians, Kennedy ordered the reflective glass shield atop the presidential limousine removed.

'We can't have you hiding from the people," one official complained.

And, after all, politics had brought the president to Texas, a pivotal and worrisome state in his 1964 re-election plans.

Huge, enthusiastic crowds greeted the motorcade. Ken-nedy, his wife Jackie at his side, smiled and waved from the back seat. Up front, John and Nellie Connally beamed at the Texas welcome.

Just before 12:30 p.m., the motorcade slipped out of the glass and steel canyons of downtown and zigzagged tow­ard Elm Street and a drab, seven-story brick building.

Moments before the limou­sine reached the Texas School Book Depository, Mrs. Connal­ly turned to Kennedy. And in one of the ironies of history, she said, ''No one can say Dal­las doesn't love and respect you, Mr. President."

"You sure can't," he replied. The first shot sounded like a

firecracker. The second and third shots were unmistakably gunfire.

In 1964, the Warren Commis­sion concluded that three shots were fired on the motorcade, all from the depository build­ing's sixth floor and all by Lee Harvey Oswald.

Soon, however, the first wave of conspiracy buffs were argu­ing over how many shots were fired, from where and by whom. The grassy knoll next to the book warehouse would become, as one writer called it, "an elevation on the American landscape as prominent as Mount Rushmore."

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President John F. Kennedy is slumped down in the backseat of this car after being shot on Nov. 22, 1963. Jacqueline Kennedy leans over the president as an unidentified Secret Service agent clings to the rear of the car. AP photo file.

Significantly, no one reported seeing a second gunman that day, and virtually everyone reported hearing no more than three shots.

Even so, the Warren Report came under attack almost immediately, and a zealous dis­trict attorney in New Orleans launched an investigation that eventually resulted in the only criminal trial connected to the bloodshed in Dallas.

Jim Garrison prosecuted businessman Clay Shaw on conspiracy charges in a trial that included 34 days of testi­mony and less than an hour of jury deliberations. After the acquittal, Garrison arrested Shaw for perjury, but the courts dismissed the case, branding it ou tragcous and inexcusable persecution.

Thirty years later, surveys show that more than eight out of 10 Americans do not accept the basic conclusion that Oswald, a lifetime misfit, was

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the lone assassin. Yet, as so many reject the

commission's finding, the Ken­nedy family itself accepts it.

The slain president's brother, Sen. Edward Kennedy, has refused to debate conspiracy theorists or comment on their contentions, but he complained recently when informed a new book would contain autopsy photographs and enhanced pic­tures of the shooting from the Zapruder film.

"This is the ultimate and most heartbreaking exploitation of President Kennedy," he said, "and it deeply saddens me."

At the heart of most conspi­racy arguments is whether the same bullet - the so-called Magic Bullet - could have passed through Kennedy's upper back and caused the wounds suffered by Connally.

The two were struck almost at the same instant. If the same bullet could not have wounded both men, there had to have-

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been a second bullet - and therefore a second gunman.

A new book by lawyer­journalist Gerald Posner offers

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a case for the single-bullet theory that adheres to the gov­ernment's basic conclusion.

While relentlessly denounced by conspiracy buffs, Posner's "Case Closed" has reaped mainstream acclaim.

Posner explains how medical expertise combined with com­puterized re-enactments, spe­cial enhancements of the Zapruder film and new bullet­impact tests prove the single­bull et theory. Accordingly, Oswald's first shot missed, the second hit both Kennedy and Connally and the third indispu­tably was the fatal Kennedy head shot.

"This case has indeed been dosed by Mr. Posner's work," said presidential biographer Stephen Ambrose, a onetime single-bullet skeptic. "His chapter on the single bullet is a tour de force, absolutely bril­liant, absolutely convincing."

But so many, still, refuse to believe. Partly, it's because Kennedy's death was such a consuming event; partly, ifs because in subsequent years -during Vietnam, throughout the Watergate scandal, at so many other junctures - the government lied.

Under pressure from researchers, journalists and Congress, the federal govern­ment released some 900,000 Kennedy-related documents in August, the largest single dis­closure ever. National archiv­ists assembled the "Kennedy collection" from such sources as the CIA, the House Select Committee on Assassinations and the Warren Commission.

In addition, the City of Dal­las opened its long-secret files on the assassination at the behest of a city councilman.

In both cases, the stacks of material contained intriguing gems of trivia, but no bombshells.

But it's not just in the airless warren of government files that the fascination with the events of Nov. 22, 1963, continues.

The 1990 feature film "TFK,"

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which ingrained the Zapruder images on a new generation, had a cinematic subplot for everyone - and was nomi­nated for a Best Picture Academy Award.

As expected, a new flurry of books and television specials appeared for this year's 30th anniversary. Among the offer­ings were the NBC movie "Fat­al Deception," Marina Oswald's story, and a PBS "Frontline" project devoted to her husband.

A favorite tour stop in Dallas now is The Sixth Floor, a museum located, appropriately, in the Texas School Book Depository.

The Dallas County Historical Foundation overrode the city's collective sense of shame and opened the exhibit in 1989.

It was an instant hit, and already has attracted more than 1.5 million visitors - many drawn to the eerie sniper's nest in the sixth floor's southeast corner.

''He brought us a belief that we were equal to any chal­lenge, that the greatest chal­lenge of all was to be faithful to our best ideals - and with courage he led us in a time where one false step could have doomed the world itself."

Recalling the president's inaugural phrase about the torch being passed, his brother said, "The truth was, he relit the torch for a whole new gen­eration and more."

And the JFK Assassination Information Center remains open in Dallas as a commercial, conspiracy-flavored repository of information and services.

Two years ago, the center co­sponsored an assassination symposium. With evangelistic fervor, speakers and panelists swapped conspiracy theories and cursed the government, the media and the Warren Commission.

It was such fun that it has become an annual affair.

Hundreds of conspiracy buffs and JFK researchers are back in town this week for the

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third such meeting, sharing their "individual pieces of the puzzle.''

Privately distressed over the invasive proliferation of theor­ies and disturbed by profiteer­ing, members of the Kennedy family have remained largely away from the conspiracy spotlight.

Instead, they focus on the slain president's confidence, optimism and inspiration, his contributions to the space prog­ram, the Peace Corps and civil rights, his courage during the Cuban missile crisis.

President Clinton, flanked by Kennedy kin, spoke of the slain president in such words while helping dedicate the remodeled JFK Library last month in Boston.

''The 21st century can be our century if we approach it with the vigor, the determination, the wisdom and the sheer con­fidence and joy of life that John Kennedy brought to America in 1960," Clinton said.

The library contains a new section on the assassination, but the museum dearly is aimed at memorializing Ken­nedy's life and not the tragic way he died.

"Of all he did, my brother would take the highest pride in

John F. Kennedy Jr. salutes the casket of his father, President John F. Kennedy outside St. Matthews Cathedral in Washing­ton following the funeral mass on Nov. 25, 1963. His sister, Caroline and his mother, Jacqueline, stand beside him. Ted and Robert Kennedy are in background on either side of Jacqueline. AP photo file.

the legions of young Americaris he inspired and whose lives he touched and changed," Edwarg Kennedy said through an aide.

More· than anything else, the senator said, President Ken­nedy gave the nation a revival of spirit:

Maud Humphrey's beautiful babes By Linda Rosenkrantz Copley News Service

T ODAY HER STRONGEST claim to fame may be

having produced one of Ameri­ca's most legendary screen icons. In her day, around the turn of the century, Maud Humphrey was recognized as a leading magazine and advertis­ing illustrator who based some of her most charming portraits of her little boy, Humphrey Bogart.

But with growing interest in advertising art, collectors are beginning to take a closer look at the artist and her work -beyond the celebrity

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connection. Maud Humphrey was born

to a prosperous family in Rochester, New York on March 30, 1868. She began taking evening art classes at the age of 12 and later became one of the earliest members of the Roches­ter Art Club, soon settling on her medium of choice, watercolor.

In 1886 at the age of 18 she set off for New York City and further study at the recently founded Art Students League where she learned to draw and paint from casts and live mod­els, after which she made the requisite trip to Paris for furth­er art studies.

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On Thanksgiving Day five years ago, in 1988, an earth­quake centered in eastern Canada and measuring 5.7 on the Richter scale wr -~It across Canada and in the n~ 'eastern . United States.

Ten years ago on Thanksgiv­ing Day, Syrian and Saudi Ara­bian mediators announced a cease fire in the PLO civil war in Tripoli, Lebanon, saying both Palestinian rebels and troops loyal to Yasse:r Arafat would be evacuated within two weeks.

Other highlights in history include the day the British eva­cuated New Yo:rk, on Nov. 25, 1783. It was thei:r final military position in the United States during the Revolutionary War.

In 1758, in the French and ·Indian Wa:r, the British cap­tured Fo:rt Duquesne in what is now Pittsburgh.

In 1881, Pope John X:XIIl was born Angelo Roncalli in a vil­lage near Bergamo, Italy.

In 1920, :radio station WTAW of College Station, Texas, broadcast the first play-by-play description of a football game, between the University of Tex­as and Texas A&M.

In 1944, baseball commission­er Judge Kenesaw Mountain Landis died at age 78.

In 1957, President Eisenhow­er suffered a slight stroke.

In 1963, the body of Presi­dent Kennedy was laid to rest at Arlington National Cemet­ery, following a requiem mass in Washington.

In 1973, Greek President George Papadopoulos was ousted in a bloodless military coup.

In 1974, former U .N. Secretary-General U Thant died in New York at age 65.

In 1984, William Schroeder of Jasper, Ind., became the second man to receive a Jarvik Seven artificial heart, during a 612 -hour operation at Humana Hospital Audubon in Kentuck­y. He lived 620 days on the device.

In 1986, the Iran-Contra affair eruptgd as President Reagan and Attorney General Edwin Meese revealed that profits from secret arms sales to Iran had been diverted to Nicara­guan rebels.

In 1990, Poland held its first popular presidential election. Solidarity founder Lech Wale­sa, who received a plurality of votes, won a runoff the folfow­ing month.

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• Cl Maze of dark tunnels lS eerie find Dug by Korean forced labor for kamikaze launching sites

T IME HAS ERASED MOST traces of war from the

forested hills south of Tokyo. But below ground is an eerie find: a maze of dark tunnels designed to launch kamikaze attacks, dug by Koreans forced into Japan's war effort.

Around this naval port 30 miles southwest of Tokyo, the tunnels endure: a complex of wartime aircraft factories and hangars, their mouths opening onto runways built for kamik­aze missions.

No one seems certain whether actual missions were flown from the tunnels, but practice flights are known to have taken place from them. They reflect the desperation in Japan in the final years of the war, when Japanese began pre­paring for allied air raids on their own soil.

To replace a Japanese work­force drafted to fight, historians say some 1.5 million Koreans

were brought to Japan in 1938-1945 for forced labor in the tunnels, as well as in mines, at construction sites and mili­tary factories.

Some of the Koreans who remained after the war, and Japanese teachers studying the history of the area, recently led an Associated Press reporter on a tour of one part of the 1,560 tunnels and shelters around Yokosuka.

Bushes and grass cloak many tunnel entrances. Others are cemented or boarded over. One tunnel's narrow entrance is just behind a monument comme­morating the 1889 Imperial Constitution - the document used to justify the military expansion that helped precipi­tate the war.

Inside, it's dank and dark. Electric cables dangle from 25-foot ceilings. When teacher Akihiro Harada first explored the tunnel, he found a gas mask, a bamboo toothbrush

emblazoned "specially made by the navy," and some dishes.

The floors are muddy. Dur­ing the war, they were smoother, for they were the start of runways used for quick takeoffs over Tokyo Bay.

"We had to scrape the bot­tom so flat that the planes could move smoothly," said Han Jun Su, a 70-year-old reti­ree who was forced to leave his native Korea to work on mili­tary projects in Japan· during the war.

Kamikaze planes of the Oka ("cherry flower") and Shusui ("autumn water") classes wa-e assembled and took off from the tunnels.

Koreans who worked here say some 1,000 men worked in 12-hour shifts, round the clock, using picks and shovels to bur­row through the hard day hills to an exit about a mile away, on Tokyo Bay.

Thousands were killed in accidents or died of exhaustion, illness or malnutrition. They were given one bowl of rice and some pickles for each meal.

The government admits that Koreans were brought to Japan during the war to work in mines and on construction pro­jects. But it has balked at pro­viding compensation.

Flipperdinger was 1890s toy

A flipperdinger was a type of basketball game invented for kids in 1891 - a player blows air through a hollowed branch or cane to a tube inserted in the top of the far end. The object of the game, invented decades before a basketball was germi­nating in someone's mind, was to hook the pith ball on the tube to a wire ring above it by blowing the ball up the air current.

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Dog's 50 years of adventure started 1943 Bob Thomas

Associated Press

R IDDLE: WHO HAS never said a word on

the screen, has never argued about a contract, and yet has remained a star for 50 years?

Answer: Lassie. All eight of them.

The Lassie saga began in late 1943 with the release of a "B" movie starring two immigrants from war-ravaged Britain, Rod­dy McDowall and Elizabeth Taylor. From that unpre~en­tious start has flowed eight

· more feature movies, 400 tele­vision segments, millions of toys, books, comic books and more.

Somewhere in the world, a "Lassie" TV show has been seen every day since the series began on Sept. 12, 1954. Next year will brin~ a brand ~ew "Lassie" movie, now being filmed in Virginia.

Why has Lassie prevailed when most stars of 50 years ago, human or not, have faded?

"Lassie doesn't talk back," observes Sheila Benson, former Los Angeles Times film critic, tongue in cheek. "Boy Scouts don't have that kind of loyalty. Lassie is smarter than the aver­age husband. Smarter than the average nuclear scientist, in fact. Also, Lassie keeps you warm when you are cold."

More seriously, she adds, "Lassie has always promoted that perhaps specious vision of · the tight, integral family that you find only in books and Lassie movies."

MGM produced "Lassie Come Home" as a "B" movie destined for the wrong half of a double bill. But the dog, with its near-human intelligence and well-developed sense of recti­tude, enthralled wartime Americans. Lassie became a member of MGM's star roster, along with Lana Turner, Van Johnson and Lionel Barrymore.

After six starring roles, Las­sie shifted to television and appeared on CBS on Sunday evenings from 1954 to 1971 and in syndication and reruns ever since.

The star of the new movie is an eighth-generation Lassie trained by Bob Weatherwax, son of the late founder -of the dynasty, Rudd Weatherwax.

"This has the makings of a classic, a real 'A' movie," Bob Weatherwax boasted by tele­phone from the film location in Tazewell, Va.

The film is directed by Daniel Petrie ("Fort Apache, the Bronx'') and stars Helen Slater and Jon Kenney as the

parents, Tom Guiry as the boy, and Richard Farnsworth as grandfather.

The plot? ''It's basically 'Boy gets dog,

boy loses dog, boy gets dog back,"' explained Weatherwax. "It's what all romances are about."

The new Lassie is the largest, about 70 pounds. Like previous Lassies, this one is male too. The trainer explained: ''Males are bigger, they retain their hair, and the coat looks richer."

Lassie was created by Eric Knight, who had a collie named Toots. Knight was an English-born author who work­ed in Hollywood and hated it. He wrote a short story, "Lassie Come-Home," which incorpor­ated memories of his youth into a story about a collie who travels alone from England to Scotland to rejoin the family that had been forced to sell him.

After the story was printed in the Saturday Evening Post in December 1938, Knight expanded it to a novel, which became a best seller. MGM bought the film rights for $10,000.

Enter Rudd Weatherwax, who trained movie dogs, including Asta of the "Thin Man" series. As a boy on his father's Arizona ranch, he and his collie had herded sheep and goats.

A new book, "Lassie: A Dog's Life" by Ace Collins, tells how Weatherwax's dog, Pal, won the film role. Pal had auditioned but was deemed ugly. The trainer put Pal through a diet and training regimen, and the dog was impressive enough to be picked as a stunt double. When the show dog chosen as Lassie balked at crossing a river on location, Pal made the crossing. Pal became Lassie on the spot.

"Lassie Come Home" (the hyphen was dropp~) score?­with sentimental wartime audi­ences, and the dog became an immediate star. More films fol­lowed, along with a radio show that lasted from 1946 to 1949. Lassie appeared in books, endorsements, war bond tours, comic strips. Registrations of purebred collies rose 300 percent.

At MGM, Lassie was treated like a star. In the 1949 portrait of the studio's 58 leading per­sonalities, Lassie had a place in the front row, along with Fred Astaire, June Allyson, Mary Astor and Ethel Barrymore.

Lassie's popularity waned in the postwar years, and his con­tract was dropped in 1951.

Three years later, "Lassie" debuted on CBS television and drew high ratings for 17 years. The show lasted for two years in syndication afterward and returned in 1989-1991.

Two feature films have appeared: "Lassie's Great Adventure" (1963), which com­bined four TV shows; and "The Magic of Lassie" (1978), with Jimmy Stewart, Mickey Rooney and Alice Faye.

With a new feature in the works and "Lassie" reruns reaching a new generation of youngsters on the Nickelodeon channel, it appears the intelli­gent collie will continue into the next century.

''My father always said that Lassie was an institution," commented Bob Weatherwax. "He said, 'As long as there are children, there'll be Lassie."

Indeed, all children love dogs, especially ones that have been proved valiant, loyal and lovabfe. But Lassie has always appealed to adults as well. The reasons are not hard to dis~ern.

The Lassie adventures always took place in rural set­tings with homespun folks who clung to old-fashioned valu~s. Each story carried a moral les­son, and right always preva~­ed. Lassie saw to that. To audi­ences in this troubled century, the message was a comforting one.

''It's curious," reflects Roddy McDowall, who was Lassie's first friend in "Lassie Come Home." "Lassie has been por­trayed by eight different dogs and in films and television series with different stories. Yet the dog is always appealing.

''Why? I don't know. Except for the banal observation that Lassie upholds the basic values that are the mortar of good character."

Unlike other boy companions of Lassie over the years, McDo­wall has remained an actor. Now 65, he maintains a busy career in films and television, often dealing in the macabre. He is also an expert photogra­pher and recently published a collection of star shots, "Dou­ble Exposure-Take N."

Looking back a half-century, . McDowall recalls: "I was abso­lutely dotty about Lassie. He was a marvelous animal, very bright and awesome in his intelligence. 'Lassie Come Home' was a very special film because of the time and because of its family values."

Tommy Rettig played Jeff Miller in the first Lassie series on TV. His mother in the series was Broadway musical star Jan

s And not Salem as we said before

T HIS PHOTO SHOWS the main street of down­

town East Palestine in the late 1890s or early 1900s, we're not sure which. It's not the main street of Salem as we identified in the Nov. 9 issue.

Both Regina Altenberg of East Palestine and Baird Stew­art of Salem told us about the misidentification and we decided to run the pkture again with the identities of the various businesses which once thrived along the town's major thoroughfare.

The City Meat Market is on the left foreground, followed by the Bott Brothers ~estaurant (Baird Stewart's cousm Harold Bott lived above the restaurant owned by Harold's father,

Clayton ("Carousel"), and old­time character actor George Cleveland was Cramps. At 11, Tommy was already an exper­ienced actor, having appeared in "The Five Thousand Fingers of Dr. T" and in ''River of No Return" with Marilyn Monroe and Robert Mitchum.

Adam Bott. Next is the post office; the sign is the building and on post by the curb - the Eagles Aerie is upstairs. T~e Roderus department store is adjacent an~ the. Ske_rball_ clo­thing store is beside it, with a stenciled sign painted on the side of the building.

The tall building adjoining is the Hawk Hardware and Toz­er' s jewelry store, then Kopf Clothing with apartments above. The shorter building housed Effie VanFossan Toys, and next is the Failor building publishing house, then 'Mas­chers Jewelry and Candy Land. The last tall building is a drug store at one time Hartford's -that's where the nome Savings and Loan was later built.

the show; it was work, but I enjoyed it," Provost said from his home in Santa Rosa, north of San Francisco. "Out of the show I got a respect for ani­mals and nature, which I con­tinue to have.

"Rudd had a special way of dealing with dogs, and th~t impressed a kid who was sens1-

Now 51, Rettig remembers: tive. I still am as an adult." "Lassie was a wonderful dog. I After "Lassie," Provost con­loved animals, and I would tinued working as an actor, come in every morning and then quit in 1969 to attend col­brush him and teach him tricks. lege in N orthem California. For My parents were divorced, and h d" bled hild Rudd was like a father figure to a time he taug t isa c -

ren but found that too emotion­me. It was a wonderful experi- lli I ence while it lasted, the peak of ally draining. After se ng rea

estate for several years, he now my career. More people saw works for a title company in the show than any movies I Sebastapol. The father of a made."

He continued working spor- young son and daughter, he is now separated from his wife.

adically until he was 26, then Provost occasionally attends quit entirely. During the 1~7~s, nostalgia conventions - ''My Rettig garnered bad pubhoty son asks me, 'Wh~ do they with a number of drug busts. , · d Then in 1981 he discovered want your autograp ?" - an

d hi l"f played a recurring role in a something that turne .. s I e recent revival of the "Lassie" around: computers. ' .

sen es. Jon Provost was 7 when he For most of its history, the

joined the reconstituted "Las- , Lassie franchise was owned by sie" show in 1957, but he had Texas oilman Jack Wrather and been acting since the age . of his wife, former child actress 1Yi. The mother _role was first Bonita Granville, played by Clons Leachman, ·All this stemming from an then by June Lockhart. Englishman's collie named

'1 have no bad feelings about Toots.

~~-? ____,..,,,,...._

'~~~~ . . ($~ f;.f:h '':~~ Continued from page 3 ~??ty -~~(.ff

ren' s magazines. Her career began in earnest, however, after she had completed her studies and perfected her dry watercolor technique, a time which coincided with a boom in illustrated books made pos­sible by improved printing techniques, high speed presses and new four color printing processes.

Yest:eTl{ears 'Tuesrfay 'J.(pveiiEer 23 1993

~ ~~~

nt:J~ Many of Humphrey's most

popular books were published by the Frederick A. Stokes Co. which at one time controlled the right of reproducing her watercolors. Later she did a lot of work for the famed Boston chromolithographers, Louis Prang.

The St. Mere Eglise Church in Normandy, the site of the Allied landing during World War II.

Humphrey, whose name had by now become a household word (and who was earning about $50,000 a year) not only illustrated books, she created prints, greeting cards and calendars and also took on advertising work. One of her early successes was a campaign for the Mellin Baby Food Co. for which she used her infant son, Humphtey as the Mellin ha by.

Later in her career the artist switched her focus from con­centrating almost exclusively on long-fashed, curly-haired, cherubic children. She became art director of the prestigious The Delineator magazine and did more fashion illustration, both for ·magazines and pattern companies.

It is Humphrey's illustrated books, especially those pub­lished by Stokes, that are most sought after by collectors. The following titles are all valued in the $500 to $750 range:

lt!i "Baby Sweethearts," 1890. lt!i "Children of the Revolu­tion," 1900. b "Gallant Little Patriots," 1899. b "Little Grown-ups," 1897. lt!i "Littlest Ones," 1898. lt!i "Mother Goose," 1891. lt!i "Tiny Toddlers," 1890.

'94 • reunion in Salem • IS

For 30 years afterward they didn't want to talk about their soldiering experiences in World War II, let alone think much about them.

"Now no one can shut us up, and every year at our reunions we learn a little more about the things that happened in our company, the XII Corps," Don Schnorrenberg of Salem says.

Thirty three years ago the men of the 613 Engineers Light Equipment Co., XII Corps got together for the first time since 1945 when they were dis­banded and sent home at war's end. The company comman­der's driver organized that first event, held in Chicora, Pa., and they've been meeting ever since, on the third weekend in September.

Schnorrenberg will host the 20th reunion in 1994 at the Timberlanes and over 80 are expected - it's the second time Salem has been the host town. Children, wives and grandchil­dren have often attended them in the various cities, including Richmond, Roanoke and Virgi­nia Beach in Virginia, Balti­more, Washington, D.C. where they placed a wreath on the Unknown Soldier's Tomb, and several Pennsylvania cities:

· Scrancon, Erie, Johnstown, Reading, Leechburg, Ridgeway, Pittsburgh and Williamsport.

Arms Museum hosts annual open house

HE MAHONING VALL­ey Historical Society will

host its annual public Holiday Open House Friday, Dec. 3 from. 5 to 7 p.m. at the Arms Family Museum of Local His­tory along 648 Wick Ave., Youngstown.

The- museum will be decor­ated with natural arrangements created by the Holborn Herb Growers Guild. Admission is $5 for society members and $7 for others.

Interior architecture of the museum - housed in Grey-

stone, the former heme of OliVe and Wilford Arms and built in 1905 - will be highlighted with arrangements of flowers and herbs. A Christmas tree will be decorated with Queen Anne's Lace snowflaks. Anti­que hobby horses will sport blankets of strawflowers and a doll's sleigh will be filled with herbs.

The decorations will be on view from Dec. 3 until the new year. Hours are Tuesday through Friday from 1 to 4 p.m. and Saturday and Sunday from 1 :30 to 5 p.m.

in a barn overnighf- 30 or 40 Germans, their nurses; the jeep and the tank. Next day they unexpectedly ran into 5,000 American soldiers. They were afraid the Americans would think they were the enemy because they were almost camoflauged with diesel fuel stains on their uniforntS. Om uniforms were always stained with the fuel." '-'------"'

Germans defending their Salem resident George Thomas with Don Schnorrenberg and a towns sometimes found it hard fellow soldier, Doc Hicks in a photo taken in 1945. to give up without a fight, Don says. "In one town near the Austrian border the German burgomeister was determined to defend his town from the all­ies at any cost,. and he got together 16 to 18 boys and old men armed only with hunting rifles. We were practically run­ning out of Germany then. Our regiment came up over the hill into the. town when they came out to defend it. There was a tall steeple high above the other buildings. Our first shot took the top, the second a little further down and by the third

shot the white flags started coming out."

At the end of April 1945 they had crossed into Austria, the first American troops to enter the country. At the small town of Viechtach, · everyone living there attended the memorial funeral the corps held - of the 6,000 who died on the Flossen­berg death march, _204 were murdered near there.

As they penetrated deep into Austria, they liberated the inha­bitants of Mauthausen, one of th.e largest of the Nazi death

camps where 250 were killed a day. On May 9, the corps made the first linkup between Ameri­can and Russian forces in Austria.

Don was detached from the XII shortly after V-E Day and was assigned to the 166 Com­bat Engineers to install electric lines in a camp at Regensburg - Me£serschmitt fighter planes were built there doing the war - to house captured SS troops. In· November 1945 he came home to the United States on

·the General Mason naval transport.

XII Corps members pose for the camera at the 1993 reunion. Don Schnorrenberg is fourth from left in back row.