Fifteen men who returned to Lansing, Iowa, after WWI petitioned to establish Lansing Post 50 of the newly created American Legion. A temporary charter was issued to the Lansing group on June 6, 1919.
WILLIAM EBEN ALBERT JR. was born in 1899 in Pepin, Wisconsin. He served in the Student Army Training Corps at Iowa State College. After the war, William married Anita Bakewell and became a fish culturist at the state fish hatchery in Lansing. By 1940 he had risen to supervisor rank. Their home was on Diagonal Street, near the top of the hill above the Black Hawk Bridge. He died in January 1953.
HENRY AUGUST BECK was born in Lansing in 1889. He worked in the button factory in Lansing before and after the war, first as a rug driller and then as a grinder. During the war he served as an army private. Henry never married. In 1940, he was living with his sister Clara on Gay Street in Lansing—bordering what was at the time a city park. She was a bookkeeper for the button works. Henry died in 1961 and is buried in Gethsemane Cemetery.
DONALD FELLOWS, born in 1898, was the brother of two other WWI servicemen, Bert and Milton Fellows. Their father, Albert Fellows, was a state senator and longtime Lansing mayor. Donald served with the Marines and then moved back in with his parents in Lansing after the war, perhaps working at his father’s lumber business. He died in 1937 in Eagle, Colorado, and his body was returned to Lansing and buried in Oak Hill Cemetery.
HUGO ANTHONY FRITZ and his twin sister Lydia were born in 1895 to a farming family at French Creek, Allamakee County. By 1910, Hugo and Lydia’s father had died and the family had moved into Lansing. Hugo worked as a grocery clerk and then a farmhand before registering for the draft in 1917. He served as an army private in Europe, returning on May 2, 1919, from Bordeaux, France, to New York City, aboard the ship Patricia de Satrustegui.Hugo farmed for the next decade or so south of Lansing and then moved into town and worked for Kerndt Bros. He died in 1964 in La Crosse, Wis., and is buried in Gethsemane Cemetery in Lansing.
HAROLD W. GAUNITZ, born in 1891, was a shipping clerk for an iron mine before the war and then a butcher in his father’s Lansing meat market and grocery. He played trombone in the Lansing Cadet Band. Gaunitz’s military experience began in Canada. He had been working with a railway construction crew in British Columbia when World War I began, and enlisted in the Canadian Army. When the United States joined the war in 1917, he got a release and enlisted in the U.S. Army. Gaunitz was stationed at Camp Taylor, Kentucky, and had the rank of second lieutenant by the time the armistice was signed.
After the war, he rejoined his father and a brother at the market, and by the 1930s he and his brother were running the store. In June 1920, he had married Ethel Thompson, a teacher in the Lansing school. Harold was elected state commander of the Iowa American Legion in 1942. He died in 1967 and is buried in Lansing’s Oak Hill Cemetery.
ROBERT EMMET GUIDER, born in 1892, earned the rank of army sergeant. Robert had grown up in Allamakee County. His father died when Robert was only 2 years old, and his mother, Lucy, continued to farm in Lafayette Township, Allamakee County, Iowa to keep her eight children fed. By 1910, Lucy and the three of her children still at home had moved into Lansing. Robert moved back in with his mother on Lansing’s Third Street after he returned from the war and worked for the United States Post Office as a mail carrier. He married later in life and died in 1961. He is buried in Gethsemane Cemetery in Lansing.
CHARLES IRWIN HATHAWAY was born in 1893 in Waukon, Iowa. Before the war he worked as farmhand in Allamakee County’s Lansing Township. Hathaway served as a private first class with army infantry units. After the war he returned briefly to Lansing, but by 1930, he had left for Kitsap, Washington, where he worked as a cement finisher and then a truck driver. Charles died in Oct. 1966 and is buried in Kitsap.
JOSEPH MARTINUS JOHNSON, born in 1886, lived with his parents on Lansing’s Main Street as a young man, doing odd jobs. He had moved to North Dakota to farm when he was inducted into the army on April 1918. As a private first class, Joseph served with an army depot brigade. He was discharged at Camp Dodge on June 7, 1919, with a surgeon’s certificate saying he was 10 percent disabled. Soon after arriving back in Iowa, he married Fern Hessel. They raised their family in Paint Creek Township, Allamakee County, and Joseph worked as a conductor for the Chicago Milwaukee & St. Paul Railroad. He died in 1956 and is buried in Oak Hill Cemetery.
EDWARD JULSON JR. was born in 1897, the son of a Lansing jewelry store owner. The Julsons were Catholic and Edward attended the parochial school through high school. He served as a private in an army depot brigade during WWI. When he returned from service, Edward became a clerk at Kerndt Bros. dry goods store in Lansing. In the 1940s and ‘50s he was a jeweler in Lansing. Julson died in Lansing in December 1985 and is buried in Gethsemane Cemetery.
CLEMENT ORRBEN was born in 1896 and grew up on Pearl Street in Lansing. His Swedish immigrant father was a button cutter, his older sister taught in a country school and his older brother was a buckle grinder at the button works. Clement attended all four years of high school and in 1918, when he enlisted in the army, he was a sophomore at Iowa State College. Clement returned to live with his family right after WWI and in 1924 he married. The couple moved south to Arkansas and then Fort Worth, Texas, where he worked as a soil scientist for the Agriculture Department. Clement later moved to the Washington, D.C., area. He died in 1982 and is buried in Arlington National Cemetery.
EDWARD FERDINAND SCHOBERT was the youngest child in his family, born in Lansing in 1894. His father was a barber. Edward registered for military service in 1917 at age 24. He was a clerk for the Dubuque Electric Co. at the time, but listed his home address as Lansing. While he helped to start Lansing’s American Legion post, he was not in town long after the war. In 1922, he married Josephine Cabral and they moved to California. Edward farmed and worked for the U.S. Post Office. By 1942 he was the postmaster in Lathrop, California, where he died in 1963.
FRANK W. SCHWEINFURTH was born in Lansing in 1888. He enlisted in the Army at Waukon, Iowa. A private first class, he went overseas on May 16, 1918, aboard the Agamemnon and served in the Meuse-Argonne Offensive. Back in Iowa after the war, Frank lived with his mother in Lansing and became a county road patrolman. He died in 1965 and is buried in Oak Hill Cemetery.
ROBERT WARREN THORSTENSON was born in 1894 in Lansing. He enlisted in the Marines in 1914 and in WWI served as a private first class. When he died on July 10, 1957, he was living in Decorah, Iowa. Thorstenson is buried in Lansing’s Oak Hill Cemetery.
WILBER TRAYER TOWLE was born in 1901 in Elkport, Iowa, but by 1910 his family lived on Front Street in Lansing. His father was a station agent at the railroad. He served as private with the Student Army Training Corps at Iowa State College in Ames. After the war, Wilber returned to live with his family and in 1920 was working as a coal passer for the CM & St. Paul railway. He married Mildred Walker in 1925 in Cuyahoga County, Ohio. He was working as civil engineer at the time. Wilber died in Ohio in 1970.
JOHN E. WOODARD, born in 1881 in Bryan, Ohio, came to Lansing as a young man and worked in the button factory. During WWI he served as a cook with an army infantry unit. On returning to Lansing afterward, he was one of several boarders with the Beck family on Main Street in 1920. He continued at the button works until his death from pneumonia in January 1937. He is buried in Gethsemane Cemetery.
