Never Forgotten: The Stories of Licking County Veterans

Book excerpt: 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.