Ozarks Life: Bolivar WWII veteran is the only son of a Civil War soldier still alive

Ozark Life ^ | June 14, 2024 | Bill Plien

[Macho MAGA Man]

BOLIVAR, Mo. (KY3) - At the peaceful Parkview Residential Facility in Bolivar. Inside every door, there’s a great story.

“Pretty soon the school bell rang,” resident Bill Pool said, “knew right then, gonna be tardy again.”

Inside Bill’s room is a book full of his poems. It sits right next to the shadowbox full of World War II medals.

“I think he’s a great man,” Bill’s daughter Carolyn George said.

“He still has love,” Bill’s other daughter, Jeanie Price added.

Bill Pool enlisted in the Army in 1941 and, after basic training, was off to the heart of the ground offensive in Europe.

“The rest of France, across Germany, and Salzburg, Austria, when the war was over,” Bill recalls

Like so many families across the Ozarks, Bill’s family was in the military. Bill’s father served in the Civil War.

“The things I’ve heard them say, they thought very highly of him,” Carolyn said.

Bill’s father, Charles Parker Pool, was born in 1844. Doing the math, Charles was 80 when Bill was born. This January, Bill will turn 100.

He is the only son of a Civil War soldier still living.

“My grandfather served in the Civil War,” Carolyn would often tell her school teachers. “And the teacher would go, ‘Now honey. There is no way that your grandfather served in the Civil War.’ And I tried to tell them, ‘Yes, he did.’”

[higgmeister]

My Mom’s family were Okies by way of Alabama and then my grandparents moved back to Alabama after the Great Depression and the Dustbowl.

[rdl6989]

A lot of drummers were very young at the time.

[mass55th]

Amazing. I thought I was lucky having met and corresponded with the daughter of a black Civil War soldier who served in the 55th Massachusetts Infantry. It was the sister regiment of the 54th Massachusetts which was depicted in the movie “Glory.” Her father, named Andrew had been a slave in Kentucky, but he ran away when he heard his master was going to take him off to war with him. He ended up running into an Ohio unit, and was at the Battle of Shiloh, serving as servant to the Colonel of the regiment. After the battle, the Colonel was sent home to recuperate from chronic diarrhea, and he took Andrew with him. While in Ohio, he heard they were recruiting black soldiers for the 54th in Boston. By the time he got there, the 54th was full, but they had so many men left over, that they formed the 55th. Andrew’s two daughters were born late in his life from his second marriage to a much younger woman. His first wife had died childless.

[mass55th]

"Union soldier. Usually it was Confederate veterans who married younger women and passed on their pensions."

I spent a lot of time at the National Archives in Washington going through the pension records of the white officers and black enlisted men in the 55th Massachusetts. There were times when the Archives could not find the records of soldiers, and I was told that the VA was still in possession of those records. In order to view them, I had to contact my Congressman at the time, and he made arrangements for me to drive to a VA office in Buffalo, NY so I could go through those files. Some of those records remained in the hands of the VA because widows were still getting benefits.

[mass55th]

I had a great-uncle in Canada that served in WWI and was killed two months before the Armistice.

[SunkenCiv]

The other GGG topics added since the previous digest ping, alpha:

• African Elephants Call Each Other By "Names", Just Like Humans Do...Other species copy each other's calls, but these elephants have unique "rumbles" for each individual. [06/14/2024]
• Another row over Rhodes: Ancient ancestor whose name honours Cecil Rhodes should be renamed to help decolonise science, experts say [10/29/2021]
  • The Direct Ancestor to Modern Humans Just Got a New Name, And For a Good Reason [10/29/2021]
• Archaeologists uncover mysterious 'blue room' in Pompeii [06/11/2024]
• Archaeologists Unearth 35 Glass Bottles from the 18th Century at George Washington's Mount Vernon During Mansion Revitalization, Most Containing Perfectly Preserved Cherries and Berries [06/14/2024]
• The Controversial Legacy Of Hannah Duston, The Colonist Who Killed 10 Native Americans [06/08/2024]
• DNA Analysis Overturns Myths of Maya Empire's Child Sacrifice Rituals [06/13/2024]
• How Brutal was The Roman Invasion? [10:00] [06/15/2024]
• Israeli Soldiers, Facing Hezbollah, Use Medieval Trebuchet to Fling Balls of Fire [06/13/2024]
• Israel Uses Medieval Trebuchet Against Hezbollah in Lebanon [06/14/2024]
• New dating technique reveals time differences between Paleolithic hearth fires [06/11/2024]
• Odysseus and the Most Loyal Dog in Greek Mythology [06/11/2024]
• Origins of 'Welsh dragons' finally exposed by scientists [06/11/2024]
• Scenes of warriors from the 6th-5th centuries BCE discovered on slate plaque at Tartessian site in Spain [06/11/2024]
• The Terrifying Final Moments of Michael Rockefeller [06/09/2024]
• Young boys find T. rex fossil while hiking in North Dakota [06/10/2024]

[Verginius Rufus]

I had one great-grandfather who was old enough to serve in the US Civil War (born in 1835) but he lived in Europe. That great-grandfather's father was born in 1780--his last grandchild died in 1981. Not quite as long a span as John Tyler (b. 1790) having a living grandson today.

A number of years ago I heard a talk by a man who was then 97 years old--his father had ridden with Nathan Bedford Forrest. His father was pretty old when he was born.

Simon Bolivar Buckner, Jr., who was killed in the battle of Okinawa in June 1945, was the son of Simon Bolivar Buckner, Sr., who surrendered Fort Donelson to Ulysses Grant in 1862.