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Hometown Heroes


My home of Lansdale is one of many communities participating in a Hometown Heroes recognition whereby veterans' pictures are displayed along the main streets of the borough. I enjoy seeing these photos of young men and women who served. We have at least one banner in Lansdale of a Revolutionary War veteran. Most, though, honor those who served in World War II and the Cold War.

I'm now wondering if I have an additional hero to put on one of those banners: Staff Sergeant Bruce Mathewson, Jr.

One of the critical moments in my research is the receipt of a serviceman's Official Military Personnel File, or OMPF, from the National Archives. Every member of the Armed Forces has one, but not all of these files survive (there was a major fire at the Archives branch where these are kept in the 1970s). Fortunately, Bruce's survived.

And it was thicker than a ream of paper. The PDF file for his OMPF is 530 pages. Yikes! Whenever I open it off of my Google Drive, I get a warning that Google can't preview it and a file that large can contain something dangerous. The message makes me giddy each time.

When I first received the OMPF for Bruce, I skimmed it from front to back. In one night. I couldn't put it down, especially when I uncovered three surprises within the first five pages of the document:


He had been married!
He had three children!
He lived in Lansdale!

The third was the biggest shocker to me. My research had indicated that New Britain was his "home" but that after enlisting in the Marines in 1936 he never really returned to Pennsylvania. I was wrong. He returned to work in Philadelphia between his 1st and 2nd enlistments (1940-1942). Then he returned on leave to marry a Lansdale woman.

In his paperwork from World War II, a Lansdale address is listed as his place of residence. Sometime between the wars, though, the family moved to Chalfont. And that town is listed as his legal residence at the time of his death.

A map connecting my house with the two I've learned were residences of Bruce's family. 
There's a certain exhilaration that comes with researching the life of someone who lived so close by. In fact, I passed by his home in Chalfont countless times in my time commuting to Tohickon Middle School when I first moved to Lansdale.

There's also some humility that comes into play here. First, "residence" is not the same thing as "home." To what extent did he see that little Cape Cod home on the other side of the borough as his home? I have no idea, nor do I know how attached he was to the residence in Chalfont. By the time Emma and the kids were living there, he was a career Marine. In fact, he had re-upped for a six-year term at the time Emma, the other Emma, Bette, and Earle were living there.

I also don't know if it's appropriate to do something that honors him as a Lansdale resident who served in war time. Should I contact the Hometown Heroes organization and have a banner put up for him? He was of the town, I guess, for World War II, but not really for Korea.

And then there's my greatest humbling moment: The memorial plaque in Lansdale. On Memorial Day I had a chance to go to our Memorial Park and see the plaque on which we list war dead for World War II, Korea, and Vietnam. It would appear as if Lansdale has no record that it lost someone in the Korean War.

Memorial Park, Lansdale. 
When I saw this plaque in late May, I had only had the chance to skim Bruce's OMPF. So I thought that I had found the Lansdale serviceman who had died in that conflict. And I was enthused at the thought of working with the Borough, the VFW Post, and maybe even Bruce's family to put his name on that plaque. However, it would seem as if that's not appropriate. At the time of his death in Korea he wasn't a Lansdale resident. Perhaps his family (I believe that Bette and Earle are alive still) will be able to tell me otherwise, but my attempts to contact them haven't been successful to date.

A memorial in Chalfont, a five-minute walk from Bruce's residence at the time of his death. 

Memorial in Chalfont.

Memorial in Chalfont. 
Still, I should be gladdened at having the chance to research someone so close by, and I use the word chance purposefully here. My task was to identify a serviceman who served in Korea, died in Korea, was buried in Hawaii, and who hailed from Pennsylvania. Only six servicemen fit that criteria! One was listed with a home of New Britain. I was pretty lucky that in this large state, I found someone who, at one point, was only blocks away.


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