Memorial Day, 2016

We mark Memorial Day with thanks and appreciation to all who died in the service of their country, and with a letter from the NCCHP archives written by Noble & Cooley employee Howard S. Ellis on May 10, 1942 from training camp at Fort McClellan, Alabama. Howard had enlisted on April 17. The letter is to his fellow shop workers at Noble & Cooley.

For a larger, easier to read version click on each image below.

Howard's letter short letter covers some of life's great wishes and realities:

"If I can only have two wishes... I wish that the war was all over and I was home. The next wish would be that I was married."

"And for the gals down here I like the gals up there a lot more than the gals here. For the boys up there that ask me to find some girls for them they have to find [them] theirself or keep what they got."

"If anyone thinks that Army life is swell get in the Army and find out how it is."

Did Howie's two wishes come true?

Liz Jones, NCCHP board member and a direct descendant of James P. Cooley recalls: "Howie did come home after the war and spent the rest of his life in Granville, working at the shop in the tin room on the first floor (we still call it Howie’s Room). He did marry (Hazel Bettinger, on September 5, 1951) and they lived on Sodom Street. He was quite a character – and very hard to understand as he had no teeth!"

Howie Ellis (left) with Gunner Haig in 1935, turning drumsticks at Noble & Cooley

Howard Ellis died on March 11, 1999 at the age of 87 and is buried in Springfield.

For a picture of Howie Ellis with his N&C co-workers CLICK HERE.