Clarksville, TN – When Ron Smithfield attended the opening of the National WWII Museum in New Orleans, LA, on June 6th, 2000, a thought occurred to him, “Why can’t we do something to honor our veterans in Clarksville.”
Smithfield shared his thoughts at a meeting with leaders of the local Kiwanis Club, and they said they would gladly support the idea as long as the project actively involved the children of our community. Two great projects resulted from that meeting.
“So, we started the Veterans Essay Contest in 2000,” Smithfield said. In 2001, 9/11 happened, and after we rebuilt the courthouse, which had been damaged in the 1999 tornado, we realized that there was only one picture of a veteran in that building. We thought, why not more? Now, we have 244 pictures.”
WWII veteran Gerry Gilman developed a concept for displaying the photographs and creating drawings. Bob Lewis led an effort to collect and digitize personal photos of our local veterans, and historian Randy Rubel was contacted. He had notebooks filled with pictures of veterans, going all the way back to the Civil War and beyond.
“That combination of Randy’s pictures and others that people brought into the library, coupled with Gerry’s concept, and us finding a printer in Nashville that could create these panels, resulted in this display,” Smithfield said.
The process started in 2003. It took about a year to bring to fruition. The men involved raised $11,000 to make it happen.
“I had interviewed a lot of these men years before – I had worked with many of them – they were my friends and neighbors,” Rubel said. “I had worked on a state project in 1969, an oral history project for the Montgomery County Historical Society. When this came up, I immediately jumped on board with the Kiwanis Club. My father’s picture is on the south wall, and my two brothers’ pictures are on the north wall.
“The Kiwanis Club wanted to honor these men. There were so many people here when we unveiled this display on November 13th, 2004. This place was packed.”
“We had enough pictures to make two panels. These pictures also made the first book,” Smithfield said. “The library was fantastic. They gave us a long hallway to use, where we interviewed the families. Bob did the pictures. We copied the pictures and documents and handed everything right back to the families. That’s how we put the books together.”
There are five volumes in total now. After the first project, people were calling Smithfield and his team to see how they could get their family members in the book.
Smithfield still has a limited quantity of books that are available for sale. Funds support the Kiwanis Club children’s charities. They are available at the Kiwanis Club, the Customs House Museum, the Historical Society, and Montgomery County Archives.
Danny Krantz brought some of his father’s personal WWII memorabilia when we met to talk about the display. “My father, James Robert Krantz, invented a harness system for the B-29,” Krantz said. “During WWII, over Japan, he made his own harness out of a parachute strap, and that’s what saved his life. They were under attack by Japanese Zeroes. They couldn’t get to him so he hung outside the plane for about 20 minutes. He lost part of his ring finger to frostbite.”
Krantz showed an amazing picture of his father hanging outside that B-29, that was taken from another airplane.
The men in the courthouse that day talked about conversations they had had with WWII. Korean Conflict and Vietnam War veterans. There were stories of Japanese soldiers handing their weapons to American soldiers in the Aleutian Islands just so they could join them in the chow line.
They shared Charlie Denton’s story from WWII. A German soldier’s mounted gun couldn’t be lowered enough to shoot Denton. He stood frozen against a wall, as bullets struck just inches above his head. He finally realized what he had to do. “I fired back and took them out.”
They pointed out Christopher Ammons’ picture. Rubel said he had an amazing collection of memorabilia from Vietnam. Those items are now part of an exhibit at the Tennessee State Museum.
Smithfield pointed to a picture of a Revolutionary War veteran on the wall. “He was already quite old by the time cameras came around, Smithfield said.”This picture was taken when the troops came back from Iraq, by Larry Safko. It’s an amazing picture of troops marching in front of the courthouse, with Apache helicopters flying over.
“This is a picture of a Confederate soldier named Woodard. He recaptured Clarksville. He faked out the Union Army with logs painted to look like canons. He had his 200 soldiers changing clothes and riding in circles in a way that made his opponents think he had 800 soldiers.
“We had 200 men from Montgomery County that volunteered for the Spanish-American War.”
Lewis talked about the challenges of creating these displays in the early days of digital photography. He was in the military from Vietnam to Desert Storm. His picture is on the wall, so is his son, Jason’s.
They talked about the men who are no longer with us. WWII veteran Irwin Hollis, passed just a couple of years ago. They called him Junior. J.R. Krantz lived until 2012. “He would visit schools and talk about his experience,” Danny Krantz said. “He was always my best hero.”
Gerry Gilman came from New York City. “I was a radar man,” Gilman said. “Radar was strange then. They didn’t really have any planes with radar. Imagine flying at night. They couldn’t stay out of the clouds. I was there when they installed the first radar in a plane, a pursuit plane. My brother was a war artist. He was at General McArthur’s headquarters and eventually in Australia. Then they came up through the Philippines, and so on.
Everybody in the room, just like everyone whose picture is on that wall, has stories. Gilman was in the Pacific. “I was just a GI,” Gilman said.” I only made Corporal. I was drafted. We were all students in college at the time. I got out and went back on the GI Bill. I’m 96 now. That’s me in the color picture, second row down.”
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