Posted on 06/15/2024 6:26:57 PM PDT by 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.’”
(Excerpt) Read more at ky3.com ...
Bttt
4 minutes
Ozarks Life: Bolivar WWII veteran is the only son of a Civil War soldier still alive
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ULNcaHrDxiA
“...Charles was 80 when Bill was born...”
That’s even more remarkable. Good genes run in the family.
Indeed it does!
According to this page there is also one daughter of a Union veteran still alive
https://suvcw.org/real-sons-and-daughters
A good friend of mine from college was from Bolivar. What a cool claim-to-fame for a small town.
I wonder what Charles’ secret was. One could make a fortune today…
Ya gotta wonder about the “mechanics” at age 80.
When a reporter asked how he was able to make love to his 38 year old wife at his advanced age, he said he had one of his sons help him on and then 3 of is sons to take him off.
The reporter asked why it only took one son to put him on, but 3 to take him off, he said “I fight like hell!”
In the Clive Cussler novel ‘Raise the Titanic, one of the plot twists noted that at the time (late 1970’s), there were still over 50 women alive drawing US Civil War widow pensions. It mentioned that it was not uncommon for elderly Civil war veterans to marry very young women, thus securing these ladies pensions upon the soldiers’ deaths. This at a rime before Social Security or much of any social safety net benefits for the poor.
Me too. Great-granddad was one of four brothers, older ones CSA, younger ones USA (he was one of the youngers). Had grandma when he was in his fifties, she had Dad when she was in her late forties (his oldest brother was 16yo when Dad was born), Dad was 30 when I was born, and I'm 70.
A civil war widow died recently. Young teenager married him during the depression-1930’s. She was poor and he was old.
I can still remember being a child in Chicago and reading in the Chicago Tribune about the last Union and Confederate soldiers marching in the parade. And then the next time only the Confederate soldier marched and there were jokes about the Confederacy finally winning the war.
In Lee’s Last Retreat: The Flight to Appomattox, historian William Marvel identified Private Pleasant Riggs Crump, of Talladega County, Alabama, who died December 31, 1951, as the last confirmed surviving veteran of the Confederate States Army.
I’ve since read that the stories of that time were wrong and he was outlived by a Union soldier.
None of my Civil War soldier ancestors lived past 1922.
Also FWIW my great-great-granddad on my mother’s side landed in Philadelphia from Ireland in 1860, immediately joined the army (union of course), which seems to be something common among the Irish immigrants. His daughter and daughter’s daughter (b.1903) were candypackers, her daughter married the Okie and had me.
Sixth West Virginia Volunteers
Union soldier. Usually it was Confederate veterans who married younger women and passed on their pensions. It looks like Bill’s father married a young woman with four children whose husband abandoned her. He was 71, she was 27, and they had five more children.
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