Howard Herron Memoir - University of Illinois Springfield

Howard Herron 7 0
A: Used to but they're getting down to where they don't. They have a
banquet every year, the American Legion and the Veterans of Foreign War
have a dinner for all of us and our wives. And tonight they are having
one and I don't even think that there will be only five veterans left.
I'm the only living charter member in the American Legion and the rest of
them have all passed on.
Q: Did you eves march in one of the American Legion Parades?
A: Oh yes. Every year. I missed it there for a while. There was quite
a few of us in them days.
Q: And you would go over to Veterans Park?
A: Yes, and go past the Senior Citizens home and to Veterans Park.
Helen Harms, I think, planted a tree in the park here, in honor of her
first husband. He enlisted at the same time that I did and we'd stop
there and fire a salute and then we'd go on to the cemetery and have a
program. We'd have a speaker and fire a salute and play taps. And we
would have one to play taps up there and we would have one way down at
the end of the cemetery and he'd bring the echo back. He'd play the
echo.
Q: I always thought it was a very impressive ceremony.
A: It was. But they're getting down now, I think there's only about
five of us left, but I'm not sure. Frank Fitzue, he's in the nursing
home in Virden, and there's supposed to be four of us there tonight and
there's several widows of course. Ladies live longer than men.
Q: Sometimes.
A: Sometimes, they say the good die young. (laughs)
Q: We were going to talk about World War I1 a little bit and how it
affected the people on the home front. Do you remember some of the
things that the people had to do during the war to help out or to do
their part?
A: They rationed gasoline and that was the biggest thing. And the sugar
was rationed and meat was rationed. The rents were frozen on the houses,
people renting, and they just put the freeze on about as much as they
could.
Q: Were tires hard to get?
A: Yes. We had to have an order from a place, I forget what they called
it now, but there was a headquarters in each county and you had to go
there and have, like if you were working for the ammunitions factory out
in Illiopolis, that was east of Springfield. Everybody that traded there
had to go to the headquarters and the manager, they made ammunition
there, and lots of people worked out of there and there was plenty
employment. You had to get orders for a tire. I was selling cars for
the Metropolitan Chevrolet when the war broke out and we kept our